
i 



III 



1 



THE 



PEOPLE AND POLITICS; 



OR, 



Cl^e ^tmcture of ^tategs 



AND 



THE SIGNIFICANCE AND RELATION OF 
POLITICAL FORMS. 



BY 



\ 



G. W. HOSMER, M.D. 





/<rnv OF co7J5fi;.\ 




BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 

1883. 






THE SKILL OF MAKING AND MAINTAINING COMMONWEALTHS CON- 
SISTETH IN CERTAIN RULES, AS DOTH ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY • 
NOT, AS TENNIS PLAY, ON PRACTICE ONLY ; WHICH RULES NEITHER 
POOR MEN HAVE HAD THE LEISURE, NOR MEN THAT HAVE HAD THE 
LEISURE HAVE HITHERTO HAD THE CURIOSITY OR THE METHOD TO 
FIND OUT. 

HoBBEs' Leviathan, Chap. XX. 



Copyright, 1881, by G. IV. Hosmer. 



r 



to 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 

I. — Intention of the first political scheme. 

II. — Nature of the first sovereignty and the organization it produces. 
III. — Universal events. 
IV. — An abstract statement of all history. 
V. — Relation of the facts to forms of government. 
VI. — Forms of government are related to stages of social progress; their 

natural course of succession. 
VII. — Segmentation of society, and relation of the parts to the various forms. 
VIII. — Effect of dominant national conceptions. 
IX. — Illustration of the nature of forms. 
X. — Deceptions of history, 
XI. — Politics is a physical science. 

XII.— There is no standard of excellence as to forms apart from the circum- 
stances. 

CHAPTER II. 

PRIMARY PERSONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 

I. — Character of the first state. 
II. — War is the primitive activity. 

III. — Operation of military principles forces the supremacy of an individual. 
IV. — Relation of this state to earlier conditions. 
V. — How the commander becomes a sovereign. 
VI. — Story of Cyaxares. 
VII. — Force is the sovereign's warrant. 
VIII, — Diversity of the sovereign office. 

IX. — Conditions of Endurance and facts which force change. 



^^ TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE OLIGARCHY. 

I.— Succession and relations of the oligarchy. 

TT Who the oligarclis are. ,. 

m -EelatiL of L. divisions to this conflict ; operation of inequality. 
TV-Tlie first codes ; relations of the people to the law 

V.-How authority is organized and administered in the ol.garchies. 
VI— Issue of the oligarchy. ^ 

VIL-niustrations : Athens, Eome, the Jews, Danus. 

CHAPTER IV. 

DEMOCRACY. 
I —Relations of democracy to oligarchy. 

less dangerous. 
VI -Pericles-Nature of his relation to the state. 
Vn.-Nominal democracy as contrasted with the reahty. 

YIII, Democracy and cities. 

IX. Democracy and equality. 

X.— Individualism. 

XI Democracy and race. 

XII.-An erroneous conception of Montesquieu. 

CHAPTER V. 

TYRANNY. 

I -Tyrannies are accidents of freedom. ^ 
n -Tyranny differs from monarchy in spirit only. 

XXI._tUs save the state, "^^^^o- -^i^ions which pro- 

IV.— How the tyrant is regarded as the auinor ox 

duce him. 
V -What was thought of Csesar in Rome. 
VI -C^sar was a constitutional functionary. 

VIL-Relation of centralized - « ^^^^^^^^^ ^een taken down in the 

VIII.-All the barriers that defend the state nave 
name of freedom. 
IX.-Tyrannies were reflections of the Satrapies. 



TABLE OF CO:srTE]!TTS. 

BOOK II. 

MODER^lSr HISTOHY. 



CHAPTER L 

VARIATIONS DUE TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 

I. Relation of modern to ancient forms. 

IX, Modern history proceeds on a higher plane of national life. 

III. Political consciousness and its effect. 

IV.— Aspirations : How they vary, and result of this variation ; relations of 
this to reform. 

V. Nations are negative or positive. 

VL Relation of this fact to success in war. 

VII.— Parties are the organs of political assertion and national vitality. 

CHAPTEE II. 

ABSOLUTE MONARCHY. 

I.__Theory of the absolute monarchy. 

n.— Common elements of the first monarchies ; the kings are Germans and 

conquerors. 
Ill —Double relation of the king to nobles and to people. 
IV.— Feudal states are military republics ; the first modern monarchy rises 

by the decay of feudalism, 
v.— Conflict with the nobles ; various issues in different countries. 
VL— Relation of the sovereign to the church and the lawyers ; the federal 

theocracy. 
VII. — Standing armies. 
VIIL— Relation to. cities ; the people. 
IX. — Summary. 

CHAPTER III. 

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 

I.— Nature of this form. Elements of opposition in modern states.^ 
XL— Limitation by compact ; record of the limitations is a constitution. 

III. — Parliament. 

IV.— Relation of the church. The irreligious propaganda. 
V. — The administrative system. 
VI. — Dominant elements. 
VII.— Standard of vitality. 
VIII. — Right of resistance. 
IX.— The press. 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 

I. — Place of the republic in the sequence of forms. The whole people. 
II. — Who are the people. 
III. — Universal suffrage. 
IV. — Proposed correlative obligation. 
V. — Parties and party action. 
VI. — Relation of the parties. 
VII. — Party abuses. 

VIII. — " Bosses " the real power behind the people. 
IX. — Liberty and its limits. 

X. — Force is the ground of obligation. 
XI. — Right and Law. 
XII. — Interval between theory and facts. 
XIII. — ^Limitation of a national development in this directioQ. 



CHAPTER V. 

MILITARY DESPOTISM. 

I. — Relations of the part in office to the whole. 
II. — Common disorders of the body politic. 
III. — Occasions which become the opportunities of usurpations 
IV. — Foreign war — Bonaparte. 
V. — Civil war — Cromwell. 
VI. — Social revolt— Napoleon III. 
VII. — Motives and moral aspects. 



BOOK I. 



ANCIENT STATES 



CHAPTEE I. 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 



I. — Political oeganization is produced by the primaiy 
human needs ; or, as more specifically put by an ancient 
author, " states are framed that men may live, and improved 
that they may live happily." Security is the first occasion, 
and the lesser satisfactions follow. 

Many men cannot occupy the same valley — the same 
region of country whatever its natural limits — without col- 
lision. Instigated by their passions, their greeds, their 
animosities, or only by the hostile spirit of different pur- 
suits, by any or by all the primitive impulses, they 
quarrel and fight. Experience that this is an inevitable 
and constant consequence of their social relations, and the 
experience, perhaps, that conflict is not always advanta- 
geous, even to the victor, become the source of habits, 
usages, considerations for one another, the single j)urpose 
of which is to prevent collisions not forced by the most 
imperative motives. And these habits or usages grow in 
importance from the perception of their beneficial effect ; 
and declarations of them become rules of conduct, or laws, 
to be enforced by common consent ; and all the fabric of the 
state, all systems or contrivances, are merely the rules that 
thus originate — though, of course, they become elaborated 
infinitely, and regard subsequently the whole complicated 
existence of great communities ; but the source is always 
the same, in rules laid down to regulate the common con- 



4 ANCIENT STATES. 

duct of the community so as to prevent this persistent evil 
of collision ; and government is a machinery for enforcing 
these rules. 

Civilization is not necessary for this degree of human 
progress. Indeed it is certainly not even necessary to he 
human in order to possess a system that thus establishes, 
on recognized foundations, the limitation of individual im- 
pulses. It rather results from the performance of instinctive 
functions of animal life. Animals possess such systems ; 
insects even ; and the ants and the bees are types of the 
way in v^hich, in nature, important unities are made by the 
conjunction of many helpless atoms in a common purpose. 
In the city of Constantinople, which swarms with street 
dogs, it is observed that these creatures have divided the city 
between them by districts ; that a dog seldom transgresses 
his recognized limits, and that if he does he is punished 
with ruthless severity by those whose ''rights" he has en- 
croached upon. Here is, at least, the first idea of the State 
— ^the perception of common advantage, and the control of 
individual vagaries. 

II. — In patriarchal conditions, with each family respon- 
sible for the evil done by individuals of its number, there is 
no such recognized control anywhere as gives the idea of an 
executive for this sort of spontaneous law, and no other 
notion of supreme authority than that involved in the con- 
ception of a god who is depicted as exercising a minute 
and personal superintendence over the conduct of each per- 
son. Eeligious unities were the first that reached such 
proportions in the world as would now be regarded as 
states, and men first agreed together to enforce the presumed 
will of a deity. With the pusillanimous and thoroughly 
superstitious races of men this system endured for many 
ages, and established governments were founded upon 



ge:n^eeal view of the subject. > 5 

it ; "but the states tlins goyerned were always swept away 
when they stood in the light of those governed by a will 
that could be more effectively applied or more readily 
adapted to changing circumstances. The bolder barbarians 
put that sort of authority to practical tests which it could 
not meet in a primitive age, outside of the sphere in which 
the patriarch was a recognized executive ; and thus in that 
larger circle they forced the organization of the first mon- 
archy in which a personal potentate exercises actually 
that dominion Avhich is assigned, theoretically, to a god in 
the other system. 

There was a well-defined period in human history anterior 
to the exercise of any personal sovereignty; but in that 
period there was no such unity as could, in our modern 
terms, be called a state. Political existence, in this large 
sense, began with the appearance of a power which enforced 
the recognition of its will as supreme, sometimes helped 
out with the fiction that this will was the will of the gods, 
sometimes without that fiction ; and this power was wielded 
by an individual, and was military. From the individual 
sovereignty passed to the few, who constituted an aristocracy 
or oligarchy ; and as the few disputed and differed and 
divided, and either side recruited its numbers from below, 
sovereignty became the possession of larger sections, and 
thus was ultimately spread out through the whole people 
in a collective capacity without the exclusion of any class ; 
so that the whole obtained what had been possessed by one 
or another of the parts, and the lines and distinctions 
which had divided the people politically into classes and 
casts were obliterated, and even the gradations of classes 
made by other than political differences were softened ; and 
this is the essential effect politically of the change from an 
earlier to a later condition of society. Political advance is 



I 



6 AlSrCIENT STATES. 

thus from the possession of power or sovereignty by the few 
to its possession by the many ; and if any step taken in the 
progress is a false step, society not only fails to secure the 
advance it counted to gain by that step, but it loses much 
that was gained previously ; for at the transition from one 
stage to another the political order is so far broken up that, 
if the step is missed, the recurrence is to an earlier and 
stronger form of authority than was endured immediately 
before the change ; while in a case of far-advanced political 
growth, and the failure of a great revolution, the disintegra- 
tion threatens society, and the state falls to even the most 
primitive form. Eecurrence is the penalty of erroneous ad- 
vance ; for as the movement is toward the distribution of 
the sovereignty where the social growth is regular and the 
political changes come as the natural consequence of this 
growth, so the recurrence is toward the concentration of 
sovereignty in stronger forms where diversions from the 
path defeat the real advance. 

III. — From the first sovereignty, therefore, by limita- 
tions it cannot resist, flow all the changes which make up 
the infinite stream of human history, which, with the same 
general conception behind, varies for every race of men, for 
every period of time, and for every climate, and always for 
substantial physical reasons. In the study of this common 
law of the life of states, and of the causes of the variable 
fate of systems, as tried by one or another of the races of 
men, in one or another age, is the true field of historical and 
political science ; for all these facts are visible and subject 
to critical appreciation. 

Every national history is, consequently, a reproduction 
of facts that are the same in their relation to one another 
— that are groux^ed on a scheme which is the same in its 
simplest outline, but is worked into all sorts of variations 



GENEEAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 7 

by the elaboration of especial parts, as a plain tune is 
made beautifully incomprehensible by the superior skill of 
a great musician. Ships vary greatly as they are built in 
different ages, in different countries, of different material, 
and for different uses ; but within the limits of such varia- 
tion, the facts that constitute their identity as ships are 
constant ; and in states is to be found a similar constancy 
in the relation to one another of essential facts, but as they 
arise in different circumstances, and are produced by men 
of different races in various ages, they are stamped with 
that appearance of infinite variety that is a characteristic of 
human history. 

These facts in this relation are constant : 

1. War resulting from collision of tribes, quarrels of 
great families, disputed possession of territory ; consequent 
military domination, and by the suppression of the in- 
dividual spirit the unity which is a state, in which all 
other wills are subject to that of a sovereign commander. 

2. Natural human resistance to the pressure imposed 
by him, and an equally natural abuse of his authority on 
the part of a man who recognizes no limit to the assertion 
of his dominion ; conflict of these elements and limitation 
of the sovereign's authority in tlie interest of the great lords 
who combined for a defined purpose, are stronger than he 
is. Reactions in favor of the sovereign will may repeatedly 
renew this conflict, and the limitation may stop for ages at 
a point of inconsiderable progress ; but unless the state 
perishes in the conflict, the ultimate consequence is as 

given. 

3. Enlargements of the limitations thus made follow 
until every element of the society is included as possess- 
ing a beneficial relation to these limitations ; and the 
elements thus included— proving intolerant of the pressure 



8 ANCIEIirT STATES. 

of authority, and proving also the most potent body in the 
state— enfeeble and disintegrate authority in their own 
interest; government decays, becomes a mere series of 
formalities, and anarchy results. 

4. In this enfeebled condition of the state it falls an easy 
prey to some foreign conqueror ; or, if no foreign conqueror 
comes and the state is left to its own resources, then a 
relentless application of force is made, in defiance of the 
farcical political formalities, by some man in possession for 
the moment of the real power of the state, and a tyranny 
is set up ; and from this point there is a recommencement 
of the cycle, though on a plane different with regard to 
civilization. 

I^. — In every nation which has passed regularly through 

aU the stages of national growth, decline, and decay, this 

scheme may be taken confidently as the skeleton of its 

history. It is, indeed, the abstract of aU ancient history, as 

the analogous scheme elsewhere given is of modern history. 

As in logic or in arithmetic we have processes that are 

formally true— forms that are the same without regard to 

contents — by which we may count or reason in any sphere 

of knowledge, sure that the sum or the syllogism rightly 

used will give accurate results whether the inquiry relates 

to astronomy or trade ; so in the scheme laid down above, 

only the names, the dates, the laws, the homes, the costume 

need vary to adjust on this frame the history of any race of 

men in any age. All that is ordinarily called history is the 

contents of these forms that are universal. Call the king 

who is dominant at the close of the first division by any 

of the familiar names, from Cyaxares to Mehemet Ali ; call 

the great lords, the Koman patricians, or Hebrew priests ; 

call the elements that make the pressure in the third period 

the Athenian democracy or the Jacobins of France ; caU 



GE]S"EEAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 9 

the tyrant — Pisistratns, Dionysins, Caesar, Periander ; — 
all these are but names that relate to contents of the for- 
mnlse ; the formulse are the same. 

y. — It will be noticed that the facts, as grouped, are 
related in a way which suggests the historical procession of 
certain political forms. It is not, however, intended to 
argue that monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, and 
tyrannies are the entities of human history ; but rather that 
each in its turn is an indication that national growth and ' 

political progress have reached a stage related to facts that 
make themselves apparent in that way. 

Several definite stages in the progressive changes that 
relate to the location of the sovereignty and the limitation i 

of its operations, have been immemorially recognized ; and ^-i. 

the familiar names of despotism, monarchy, republic, and 
democracy, have been used to designate the political 
systems of states according as they have reached and l{j 

halted at one or another of these stages ; but it has not 
been noted sufficiently that these names designate only 
points of progress and not political entities ; that they are 
symptoms of the social and political condition of the state. 
It is not clearly comprehended that these so-called ^' forms 
of government" are only outward signs of inner growth; 
the indications, not the essentials of identity. As a conse- 
quence, it is not observed that these stages of political 
advance, or forms of government, are necessarily successive, 
and bear, each to the other, a relation of sequence tliat is 
commonly the same, or only varies in widely exceptional 
circumstances. 

Yet these are most important facts, and without a 
due consideration of them, an accurate comprehension of 
politics is impossible. 

VI. — All the so-called forms result from the location in 



\ 



10 ANCIENT STATES. 

the state of the sovereign will— as it is with one, with the 
few, or with the many. Sovereignty changes its place in 
states by gradations that are always substantially the 
same, and in consequence of requirements that relate to 
the effective performance of necessary political functions. 
By the change in the position of the sovereignty from a 
person to a class, and by the extension of this class until 
it includes the whole body of the people, every atom of 
the political mass becomes vitalized with this principle of 
the organic life of states. Either the atoms that thus 
acquhe political vitality are of a proper quality to perform 
the functions with which they are thus charged as partici- 
pants in the sovereignty, or they are not of such a quality ; 
if they are, the progress made in the functional political 
changes is valid and advantageous to the state ; if they are 
not, then their function as elements is only nominally 
discharged by them, but in reality by a smaller number ; 
and so the way is led toward the defeat and failure of the 
progress involved in the distribution of the sovereignty, and 
toward the change that ultimately gives it again into the 
hands of an individual ; for the progress made when the 
sovereignty is nominally possessed by many, but practi- 
cally exercised by a few, is a spurious progress, and occurs 
only where the advance in the distribution of the sovereignty 
has outrun the preparation or growth that fits men to com- 
prehend its obligations or to perform the functions. 

Each system of government is simply a determination 
what class— what stratum of the social geology — shall 
dominate and control the whole body ; and this determina- 
tion is the result of events. K a society is established on a 
preconceived scheme— that is, on a written constitution, 
adapted by the statesmen of the time to the presumed 
conditions and requirements of the society— this adaptation 



GEl^EEAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 11 

is successful in so far as tlie views taken of tlie requirements 
of the case were accurate ; or otherwise in so far as the 
scheme of government, though nominally in force, is really 
neglected and remains inoperative and a dead letter — 
natural principles silently operating in lieu of its invalid 
prescriptions. If the determination is by events, with- 
out such a scheme, it is always the domination of the ] 
stronger, that is, the stronger in the conditions ; and this is J 
valid, and assumes the only possible condition of a just "^ 
equilibrium — ^the trial of strength from time to time hy the 
subject classes against the others. Occasional revolution is 
the liquidation of political accounts. 

All changes in the form of government are thus only 
adaptations of the political machinery to the actual condi- 
tion of the society — modifications of the processes by which 
the will of the stronger is applied as a rule for the conduct of 
aU the others ; and these changes, and forms of government 
themselves, and that character in the laws of a country 
which differs as the form is monarchical, aristocratic, or 
democratic, are related to the elevation or depression of 
respective social divisions, and the change of forms and 
modification of the laws are the consequences and results of 
a change of relation in these divisions. As the subject 
masses rise in importance, the movement is toward demo- . 
cratic forms ; as these masses are subordinated more and 
more rigidly by the regular process of repression, or by 
great sudden reversions, the primitive forms recur ; and the 
whole gamut of political forms is between these extremes. 

But these changes are, in their turn, all due to the an- 
terior changes, or growth, of the social mass. All the points 
within the limit of possible adaptation, as well as the others, 
have relation to the condition of the people socially. It is 
by growth that is social that a given element of the society | 



12 ANCIENT STATES. 

loses its pre-eminence, and gives place to one that was 
previously weaker and subordinate ; and it is Iby strictly 
social changes that a society reaches the point at which it 
revolts against the pressure it previously endured. Every 
society that grows and impresses its different will on things 
within its control, modifies these to its occasions. As a man 
in armor, who endures his burden from the apprehension 
of an enemy, readily casts it aside and enjoys himself in 
easy garments if sure that no enemy is near, so in the modi- 
fications to which it is subject by growth, and by the rising 
importance of classes that were not counted previously, 
society establishes the equilibrium of government with a 
view to the conditions that exist, and does not preserve 
those that were good in conditions that have passed away ; 
adjusts the pressure of authority and the enfranchisements 
of privilege to the convenience, comfort, and safety of the 
classes that are important now, not to those that were im- 
portant formerly. 

Political form and the changed position of the sovereignty 
that forces it are only the outward consequence of this 
inner growth, and man does not make himself one or the 
other of the governments at random, but as he rises in the 
scale of humanity he casts away the simpler cruder forms, 
and spontaneously produces others, because the earlier 
form is inadequate to his needs, cramps his life, does not 
secure him the activity and protection he requires. In his 
physical frame man has not, as was once supposed, a cer- 
tain form of bony skull to which the brain within must 
adapt itself in form and size ; but, on the contrary, it is the 
pulpy brain that is the shaping power, and the skull adapts 
itself to its contents— the hard walls yield to the growth 
of the soft mass they protect. In a similar way it is the 
contents of the political shell which determines its shape ; 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 13 

but the form of this case is a sure indication of the character 
and condition of the contained substance. It is the man 
within, the aggregate of human units considered as a social 
quantity that is better or worse, higher or lower ; and it is 
this condition of the man that forces the frame of the state. 
It is the extravagance of folly to suppose, as has so often been 
done, that men can be changed or made better or worse by 
framing for them new constitutions. It would not be more 
absurd to suppose that by putting the substance of a crab 
into the shell of a lobster we should change its nature. 

In every national aggregate there are, therefore, regular 
modifications of form which result from two changes : First, 
an actual change as to what element in the national life is 
the stronger— a change in the fact that one element is out- \\ 

grown by another ; or that peace gives precedence in the 
state to the commercial classes, or war to the military. 
Next, a relative change in the subject masses as to the -^ 

limit of tolerance for the assertions of authority. 

Change, which may be grouped under these two heads, 
is the constant and necessary result of the growth of every 
society; and the changes in political form have definite 
relation to these social changes, and are simply modifica- 
tions by which the political machinery is adapted to the 
new circumstances. If the frame of the state is rationally 
adapted to the growth by constant and moderate change, 
the society moves naturally and tranquilly to the limit of 
its destiny— that impassable point elsewhere considered; 
but if one or another of the classes refuses to accept the 
change in the frame that is required by the growth of some 
other class, or if the pressure of authority is asserted to a 
degree to which the growth of society has made it intoler- 
able, there is revolt and conflict, and the further progress 
win depend upon the issue of that conflict ; or if there is no 



^^ ANCIENT STATES. 



revolt the society continues in its inadeqiaate frame, cramped 
and stunted in growth, and becomes prematurely decrepit 
through the loss of relation between its theory and the facts 
or perishes outright if war finds it in a condition of decrepi! 
tude thus forced by the prevention of its growth. 
_ In the direction of one or another class the whole 
vitality of the nation moves at one or another period of its 
existence. As the life of an animal may in certain condi- 
tions elaborate organs fitted for its existence in the water, 
and in other conditions organs fitted to existence in the air' 
BO m one age all the thought, aH the ardor, aU the activity of 
youth and age in a state are alike turned to war, in another 
to commerce, in another to science and literature ; and 
though in these ages, respectively, the other activities re- 
ceive a share of attention, and are cultivated side by side 
with the one that has the greater share, it is this that pre- 
I)onderates and gives character to the nation at the time. 

VIL-Society divides itself, for political purposes, into 
three forces, which were always spoken of anciently as 
"the one, the few, and the many." 

In every aggregation of human creatures that has reached 
the conditions in virtue of which it is caUed a state, this 
same segmentation of the organic mass appears. In the 
crudest or most composite states, in ancient times or modern 
times, with freedom or despotism, it is always the same ; 
there is the common populace, there are the groups of 
superior persons, and there is the sovereign individual-the 
one man who in any great crisis of the national destiny- 
which crisis is a trial and competition of all the units- 
proves himself tlie dominant unit. And the political forces 
regard always this division, and the conflict of political 
vitality IS across these lines. Several early writers, of whom 
the clearest was Folybius, recognized these facts somewhat 



ge:neeal view of the subject. 15 

clumsily in tlie declaration that tlie best governments were 
equaUy made up of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. 
As thus used, the word monarchy could only mean the 
executive force ; aristocracy the political operation by a 
senatorial or other council of the superior persons; and 
democracy, the popular declaration of assent or dissent, or 
other similar appearance in the public concerns of the 
opinion or impulse of the people. Writers were naturally 
led to this way of expressing themselves because in all 
early states the advisory council was an aristocracy, the 
executive was a king, and the people were named and 
considered only in democracies; but the terms may be 
made more general by consideration of the ideas behind the 
words aristocracy, monarchy, and democracy. As thus 
reduced, the ancient dictum imports that the best govern- 
ments were those in which there was an individual execu- 
tive, in which the rights of the many were established in iv 
the law, and in which the legitimate superiority of the few 
was accepted as a fundamental fact. It, therefore, as- 
sumed and started from the natural division of the society, 
and implied simply that the best governed states were those 
in which the natural elements had found a more or less 
accurate balance of theu^ respective forces ; and the best 
efforts of political science in modern times have been 
directed mainly to the endeavor to secure that balance in 
constitutional systems ; and political changes are valid iq 
proportion to their right relation to that purpose. 

Even in the crude, rudimentary government there must 
be a machinery for exercising so much of the force of the 
community as may be necessary for the execution of its 
will ; a machinery to hear and deliberate, in order that 
action should not be taken from blind impulses, but that 
the cooler and wiser heads may decide beforehand on the 



— ^ 



16 _ AT^CIEISTT STATES. 

expediency of any proposed act; and a macliinery for 
declaring the assent or tlie opposition of tlie mass of the 
people — the many — to what is suggested or advised. These 
are, respectively, essential functions — every organized so- 
ciety spontaneously, and even instinctively provides for 
their exercise ; and the most elaborate organizations merely 
overlay them, and often disguise and smother them, with 
secondary contrivances. In its most obviously necessary 
operations, therefore, political organization is seen to start 
from the normal division of society ; and the political 
functions and the social elements respectively have a natural 
relation to one another. From the many, the superior 
persons are distinguished by natural qualities or artificial 
conditions ; and the competitive conflict for pre-eminence 
always comes at last to be determined between two or three 
persons, and between one of these as the pre-eminent man 
and the whole community beside, as there must always be 
such an interval as constitutes him a class by himself, be- 
cause in any group there can never be but one first man. 

In different states the three elements exist in varying 
relations to one another, and the character of the state 
differs with this variation. Much of political history is 
the record of the possibilities of this variation — of the play 
of these powers as one or another is favored and flourishes, 
and the others are put out of view for a generation or for 
ages through the accident of wars, or the nature of a people, 
or the concurrence of climate and the character of the 
country, and the intelligence or dullness, self-assertion or 
humility of the race. Patient races, pursuing quietly their 
private enterprises, and abandoning public concerns more 
and more to a central authority, lose the conception of the 
relation of that authority to their will ; and if this coincides 
in time with the administration of authority by a man of 



GEl^ERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 17 

more than ordinary ambition and capacity, and if the events 
of the age are such as to afford to a royal leader an advan- 
tageous occasion for his talents, the regal element flourishes 
to the disadvantage of the others, and the whole organization 
of the state becomes grouped around this central figure. 
Or if war compel the nation to become an army, and the 
royal leader be a successful soldier, he grasps, as military 
chieftain, a power that he does not relinquish when a peace 
has been conquered, and he thus establishes a despotic 
authority, which seems to deny the existence of any other 
element of government. Similarly, through circumstances 
favoring their growth, either the advisory aristocratic 
organism, or the machinery declaring the assent or opposi- 
tion of the people, may by turns absorb in themselves so 
great a portion of the common activity as to leave to the 
others only an atrophied existence. In any one of these 
cases we should have monarchy more or less extreme, and i. 

aristocracy or democracy more or less qualified. In short, 
the accidents of national Iiistory often impose, successively, 
all the glorious labors and onerous duties on one of the 
political divisions, and that thereby becomes the prominent 
vital power of the state ; and according as that division 
happens to be the many, the few, or the one, the state 
becomes pre-eminently a democracy, an aristocracy, or a 
monarchy, and the other powers, though in existence, are 
latent and thrust into the shade. In Rome, it was said, 
the three species of government were combined ; and from 
this we can only infer that at the period of that observation 
there was so even an operation of the elements that the 
active participation of each was apparent ; the natural re- 
lation of each element to the others, though veiled, was not 
hidden. 

YIII. — Every people has some dominant passion — some 
2 



18 ANCIENT STATES. 

supreme thonght — some ineradicalble conception of national 
propriety or human rigM, wMch controls its demeanor at all 
times, or sliapes its impulse in a critical occasion ; and a 
nation's history is an exhibition of the operation of this 
thought ; and thus a nation is only an aggregate individu- 
ality. However the occasions of life may arise, a man's 
relation to them depends upon his own character. Driven 
to sea, one is a sailor, another a merchant, another an ex- 
plorer, and so on; and so the passions or intellectual 
constitution of a people, if they do not always make the 
occasions of history, use them each for its own purposes. 
They make them also, however, under the influence of those 
master motives which are the innate forces of history ; the 
impulses that lift a class— be it the aristocracy or the 
popular mass— into vigorous operation at one period, and 
the source of satisfactions that keep it tranquil through 
ages. If the passion is for war, that will favor the permanent 
supremacy of a prince, even against many facts that would, 
but for it, put him out of date ; if commerce and industry 
are the chosen activities, democracy is inevitable ; and if a 
tranquil and easy prosperity charms the thought— if justice 
and the happy enjoyment of our own, under the nicely ad- 
justed rights of an administrative system— please more than 
the fiercer passions of war, or the grosser satisfactions of 
suddenly acquired wealth, an aristocracy will dominate aU 
other elements. 

Therefore the nation, when in its progress down the 
centuries it undergoes a change, does not change as might 
a marching column — ^keeping always the right in front. 
On the contrary, it is like the serpent in the legend, which 
went over the hills, and as it crept and crept a bird grew in 
its side, and at last flew away with it, and the extremities 
of the serpent floated behind in its flight and became its 



GENEEAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 19 

long tail feathers. So in states that which is at one time the 
whole organism becomes a mere appendage. In a new 
development of national vitality the old system and leaders 
resist in the strenuous endeavor to retain a failing suprem- 
acy ; but the current of the national vitality is against them ; 
they are dragged as they formerly dragged others, and they 
die cursing the new ideas and the degeneracy of their age. 

The part preferred Iby the circumstances that thus force 
direction becomes, for the time, the head and front of the 
nation ; it takes the leading position— the wealth, the honor, 
the glory— receives the greater accretions of growth, and is 
the organ by which the nation achieves its triumph, or is 
led to its ruin ; and the form of the nation is determined 
coincidently with this determination of the growth toward 
the parts, each in its occasion ; but, nominally, the social 
development puts the successive appearance of the divisions 
in the order stated, and this produces the consequence of 
the successive relations of the forms of government. 

IX.— Sovereign authority and resistance to sovereign 
authority are the essential facts of history ; and as authority- 
is extreme, or as it is lessened more and more by the victory 
of the elements against it, or as it recovers its ground, and' 
as the state halts for a generation, or twenty generations, at 
any one of these stages, its organization at that point is as 
essential a form as any other. Thus forms might be divided 
almost infinitely by those who attribute a great deal to 
them. But there are points of relation in the conflict which 
recur more commonly than others. On the surface of any 
country, the great geographical facts are constant ; and in 
military operations the principles of strategy are constant ; 
and thus it happens that with constant principles and con- 
stant facts in relation, armies meet at the same points in 
different wars, and succeeding generations of men are seen 






20 AN"CIENT STATES. 

contending for the possession of some old Ibattlefield, as if 
its soil were a sacred treasure. They do not regard that 
field, however ; they are brought to it inevitably by the 
same succession of constant facts and constant principles ; 
and so in the ever recurring conflict for political supremacy, 
the constant social forces oftenest find themselves opposed in 
certain defined attitudes of opposition ; and those relations 
that thus result are referred to by accepted names, as forms 
of government ; and this is convenient, but has proved 
deceptive. 

X. — Hence in stating the constancy of the essential facts 
of a national history, it is proper to make, as above, the 
reservation that this point must be judged only as to 
nations which have passed regularly through all the stages 
of growth, decline and decay. All the physiological facts 
of an individual's life are constant, but the later ones do 
not occur to those who die in youth. All nations do not 
pass through all the stages ; many are cut short by the 
proximity of great neighbors ; in others the course of 
growth is abnormal. But we may be deceived in our 
observations of the progressive relation of the facts by the 
• circumstance that we see in the world at one time, perhaps, 
all the various forms, and do not reflect that the history of 
each nation must be judged by itself. 

One nation will run through all the forms — sound all the 
deeps and shoals of political possibility — in a period in 
which another, moving more deliberately, would go but 
half the course ; so that, from the difiference of race only, 
two that started together might, subsequently, be found 
centuries apart as to their advance in political forms. In 
one country, from a greater social stability, the people may 
remain nearly at the same point for thousands of years — as 
in China ; and, in the same period, several races may have 



GENEEAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 



21 



exhausted political possibility, and liave succeeded one 
another on the soil of a neighboring country. Every history 
of a nation has its own unity and is comparable to the 
larger unity of human history only in its general principles, 
and the histories will, therefore, be unlike, or will resemble 
one another in proportion to similarity of race or of the 
circumstances in which the historic drama was unfolded ; 
but if the histories are alike, that which began five hundred 
years later will, at any given period, be five hundred years 
behind the other, and will present the apparent contradic- 
tion that it is most unlike, in fact, the nation it most 
resembles in character. Two boys at ten years, though of 
different families, resemble one another more than either 
resembles his own father. With despotisms, monarcliies, 
and republics side by side, in the same year, on the same 
continent, as in Europe, we must attend, therefore, to the 
circumstance that this is a'difierence of fact due to similari- 
ties of principle in the historic drama which gives us 
different phases of it at the same time because its evolution 
began at different times in the different countries ; but due 
also to dissimilarities in the nature of the people and in 
their circumstances ; which dissimilarities have caused one 
nation to linger for many generations at a stage in the story 
that others scarcely touched, or tripped through with 
eager haste. 

XI.— Between the truth, and common opinion of the 
truth, there is in history the same difference we may ob- 
serve in meteorological inquiries. Atmospheric currents 
were at one time regarded as the least amenable to law of 
all natural facts— as forces that could never be classified 
under any rule discoverable by human thought, and men 
believed they had given the most absolute figure of all 
causeless vagary when they said '' capricious as the winds." 



^ 



22 AlSrCIENT STATES. 

Yet now we know the laws of the storm, and can give a 
reason at any time, accurate in proportion to our knowledge 
of the facts, why the wind blows in any given way. 

All the phenomena of national histories, all the apparent 
caprices of princes, the vagaries of peoples, the wonderful 
variety of the stories of states, once regarded as chaotic and 
not to be digested npon any reasonable theory, can be 
reduced to facts related to one another by a few principles 
as simple as those of the laws of storms. But the first step 
toward the elucidation of natural laws in either one or the 
other inquiry, is to get rid of the rubbish of superstition 
and the poetical fancies that cloud and impede observation. 
Boreas, Auster, Zephyrus, and the rest, were put into limbo 
ages since ; and yet it was only very lately that the air was 
studied in its absolutely physical aspect, and solely as 
acted upon by physical and measurable forces. 

States are not yet so studied, save in the aspects of 
economical science ; but it is equally necessary to contem- 
plate, in their strictly physical aspect, all the facts that 
make up pure politics. Constant facts in the physical 
universe are subject to investigation by the processes of 
induction ; and the results of such investigation, to be 
consistent with other study, should be treated as a physical 
science. Politics should be so regarded. Communities of 
human creatures— ''bodies politic"— are organisms that 
have an existence marked by definite stages of growth and 
decay ; and the changes that take place in that existence 
do so regularly within certain limits, and under the influ- 
ence of external physical conditions, or of impulses origi- 
nating in the vital resources of these bodies. They have 
their physiological history ; and the facts of this history 
recur with certainty in the same circumstances. Politics, 
as a classification of these facts— the digestion of the facts 



GENEEAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 



23 



involved in tlie relations of men in political commnnities, 
and in the relations of snch commnnities to one another, is 
as clearly a physical science as natural history-of which, 
indeed, it is a further part, for it is a habit of the animal 
man to construct states. It has been commonly called a 
moral science. Apparently the ground of the accepted 
distinction between physical and moral science is that, m 
the latter, the forces are not only imponderable m the 
technical sense of the term, but are beyond accurate 
appreciation as facts. Politics was classed as a moral 
science, in this view of the category, because of the prev- 
alence of erroneous conceptions of the nature of the 
human inteUect. Mind was conceived as an impalpable 
force, created separately from any tangible substance, con- 
nected with the body only in an undefined way through the 
operation of an inappreciable and incomprehensible prin- 
ciple ; and all its activities were deemed equaUy vague 
and recondite ; and political thought, as one of these, was 
thus deemed the uncertain result of the operation of an 
uncertain force. But the mass of intellectual phenomena, 
classed coUectively and called mind, constitute the aggre- 
gate function of the human brain ; and the brain, like 
other organs of the human system, operates constantly in 
accordance with physiological laws more or less definitely 
known ; and it may be said that brains which are alike in 
character will, in the same circumstances and at the same 
time of life, produce the same thoughts, and that human 
actions which flow from these, and which are thus the 
constant results of the regular operation of a natural force, 
are as clearly subject to classification and physical study, 
as are the facts which result from the operation of the more 
generally familiar forces. 

For instructive inquiry in physical science, experimental 




24 AliTCIEI^T STATES. 

observation and processes of induction are necessary requi- 
sites, and the impossibility of operating states on problems 
laid down for answers by experiment is, of course, evi- 
dent ; but the advantage here is that the experiments are 
already made, and the answers are at hand. It is not 
possible to conceive a problem in politics of which the 
solution may not be found in the history of some one of the 
infinite number of states that have flourished in the world. 
History is an inexhaustible accumulation of experiments in 
politics with their results, and is mainly worthy of attention 
as such. Sometimes, perhaps, the conditions in which the 
experiment was made are not accurately given ; sometimes 
the result is more or less falsified by national or personal 
vanity, but these cases are exceptional ; and there is such 
an infinity of material— there are so many experiments for 
the elucidation of the same point— that we may readily 
throw away the false, which, moreover, we can always 
readily detect. There is less falsity than we might suppose, 
for the reason that history has generally been written to 
falsify some issue that is not before us now ; while as to the 
uses to be made of it for our purposes, it has the trust- 
worthiness of an unconscious witness. 

^^^' — It is not the function of politics to determine 
ideally v^hat government is best— that is to say, at what 
time of its existence a people is happiest— but only what is 
best in the given conditions of a national existence ; what is 
suited to the actual circumstances in which the people ficd 
themselves ; since to determine the former would necessarily 
lead beyond the limits of this science, and into an altogether 
difierent sphere of thought. That may be a moral or poeti- 
cal, it is not a political inquiry. 

As the national aspirations are toward one or another 
ideal— toward glory or commerce, equality, or that elegance 



GEITERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT. 



25 



of life wMctL is due to tTie presence of highly cultured 
classes, or as the parts of the nation that cherish one or 
another of these ideals subordinate all the other parts, these 
conceptions will lead to widely different views in regard to 
government; and from these different standpoints the 
several governments will be contemplated as admirable 
or odious. But to political science none is either ad- 
mirable or odious. Various states are only as the various 
creatures in a related series are to the naturalist, who 
must part with his reason ere he declares for fins or 
feathers without regard to the element in which either is 

to act. 

For man is not created in order to form a state, and 
therefore cannot be made such as the ideal excellence of 
an imagined state would require ; but a state is only that 
provisional or ultimate establishment of the relations of 
each to all which makes it possible for many human 
creatures to live more or less happily or safely in the same 
district, or in given circumstances ; and it must, therefore, 
have the form and the character that this need demands, 
and no other; and states must differ, therefore, as the 
people and the occasion differ ; and there is no absolute 
standard of excellence apart from the result that each is 
expected to produce, save an imaginary and Utopian 

standard. 

Not even the best administered is best if it is not adapted 
to the occasions. Indeed this consideration— "which is 
the best form of government," is the point at which an 
inquiry leaves practical politics to enter upon dreamy specu- 
lation. 



CHAPTBE II. 

PRIMARY PERSONAL SOVEREIGNTY. 

I.-— In the history of all ancient nations the first political 
fabric— the first state properly so-called— is based upon the 
monarchical principle, and involves the assumption that 
"the best and bravest man is entitled to be prince." In 
those periods of human history anterior to the exercise of 
sovereignty on this theory, though there is a social aggrega- 
tion by union of families, there is no state, and the first 
sovereignty is personal. Unity is compelled by the wiU of 
some superior individual who dominates those immediately 
about him by his prowess, courage and skill, and through 
these extends his lordship in a larger circle. 

Familiar types of this ruler are found in the heroes of 
Grecian story, from Theseus to Ulysses. In the origin of 
this authority the rule is as nearly as possible personal. It 
is not representative in any respect whatever. The theory 
that the prince is the instrument of the divine will is 
scarcely hinted in the vigor of this state. Every primitive 
tradition of political origin assumes the princely office and 
its occupation by an individual personally pre-eminent. 
He is not only the executive, but he is also the law and the 
constitution. There are no agreements that he is not com- 
petent to dispense with. Below the prince there is an 
aristocracy of nobles, made up of the world of men and 
women near to him in blood and prowess ; below these is 
the crowd of common people— farmers, artisans, handi- 



PEIMAET PEESONAL SOVEEEIGNTT. 37 

craftsmen ; and below these again are slaves, who are com- 
monly conquered enemies-either the men and women 
carried away captive from mined cities, or the earlier 
owners of the soil upon which they Uve-snhjected to the 
will of men hardier and braver than themselves. 

It is not consistent with human instinct for the nobles of 
any race or tribe, or for the free people, to accept the 
sovereicrnty of an individual under any pressure less than 
that of°inevitable necessity, and it is probable they never 
did ; but it needs to be made clear how that pressure arose 

and was applied. , , . , » 

II.— Wars are constant facts in the early history ot 
every race. Without touching the phUosophical relations 
of the apothegm that "the state of nature is a state of 
war" we may accept it as the declaration of a fact in so 
far as, by the phrase state of nature, is intended a period in 
human history anterior to the enforcement of relations de- 
fined by law. Every early history of the nations anciently 
known is a chronicle of wars with their neighbors ; conflicts 
that originate in trivial disputes, or in predatory incursions, 
and are^waged for plunder, dominion, or existence ; or that 
are earned on only in the blind impulse of an instinctive 
antipathy, which seems to move the wiU of the early man 
almost as it does the various beasts of the forest. 

Human creatures, in their earliest condition, drift over 
the surface of the earth. They move on impulses originat- 
ing in some fact of their physical condition. Tribes that 
have inhabited some happy valley for generations are 
driven forth because the country is covered with water by 
a flood in the little stream ; volcanic events drive them 
again from their mountain refuge, and dearth and famine 
hunt them down in newer homes and impel the quest for 
food in other lands. By movement thus instigated an equi- 






28 A]S"CIE]JTT STATES. 

librium is lost. They come into collision with the trilDes or 
races whose teriitories thej thus involuntarily invade, and 
wars ensue— on the one hand for defence of home, on the 
other for the conquest that must secure refuge and life. 
Floods, storms, volcanic changes, inroads of the sea, 
famines, migrations and wars— these are the staple of 
mythological fables which are the digest of unchronicled 
prehistoric events. 

An illustration of the habitual way in which the tribes 
of men in a primitive condition come into collision is to be 
found by an exception given in Xenophon's story of the 
"Eetreat of the Ten Thousand." As these heroes passed 
from Babylonia toward the Euxine they were compelled to 
fight their way across the whole country, and with every 
separate tribe to whose frontiers they came. Late in their 
march they came to the country of the Macronians. They 
found these people as they had hitherto found most others 
— at the frontier under arms prepared to dispute their 
passage. But here there was a new fact : a parley became 
possible. In other places this had not been possible, be- 
cause the languages were as strange to the Grecians as 
theirs to these savage tribes. But in the number of the 
Cyrenians there was a soldier who had been a slave at 
Athens, and who had been brought to Athens in his child- 
hood from he knew not whither. He said now to Xenophon 
that he believed this must be his country, because as these 
men shouted to one another on the other side of the river 
he understood what they said, and he asked permission to 
parley with them. Communication was thus opened, and 
it occupied but a little while for the barbarians to inquire 
what the Greeks wanted, and to accord it upon the dis- 
covery that it was only the privilege to pass through their 
country and to obtain a supply of provisions. 



PEIMAET PEESOKAL SOVEEEIGNTT. 



29 



In an hour more, for tlie mere defect of an understand- 
ino- they would hare -been engaged in mutual slaughter ; 
l^etause a people, finding an armed force at its horder 
unaware of its intentions, must assume the worst and act 
accordingly. TMs is the general condition of the early 
relation of strange tribes, and is the common source of 



war. 



Thucydides says of the early condition of Greece : "And 
the hest of the land was always most subject to changes of 
inhabitants, as that which is now called Thessaly and 
Bceotia, and the greatest part of Peloponnesus, except 
Arcadia ; and of the rest of Greece whatsoever was most 

fertile." , ^. , 

In the sixteenth century the explorers who discovered 

Canada and first made the acquaintance of its inhabitants, 
found them at war. Those wild tribes were yet animated 
by radical differences ; they were hunters on one side and 
planters on the other. Living in the wilderness, poor m the 
contrivances that make life comfortable, creatures of the 
vicissitudes of the seasons, without the useful arts or inven- 
tions that have ameliorated the condition of men elsewhere 
they yet had their standard of excellence and supported 
it with characteristic tenacity; and while one set of tribes 
subsisted as mere parasites on the game of the forest the 
others practised agriculture, and there was between hem 
the rivalry of their pursuits. They were the early brothers 
who came to the altar with different sacrifices ; and while 
the hunters looked upon the planters with ineradicab e con- 
tempt as men who had subjected themselves to the slavery 
of a reo-ular life and the necessary trammels of ever- 
recurring obligations, the planters regarded the others from 
a loftier standpoint as pitiful wretches who had not risen 
to the conception of a provision against the possibilities of 



30 AlS'CIEIS'T STATES. 

the elements. Previously these tribes had been friendly 
neighbors, and the planters had traded with the hunters 
corn for venison; but bad blood had arisen because ''the 
hunters despised the planters as inferiors;" and an occa- 
sion did not fail for this to come out. In a certain season 
the hunting was bad, and some young men of the planters 
went upon invitation to help the hunters. Apparently the 
planters were the better men as to mind or muscle or both ; 
and this may, in the first place, have been the cause of their 
settled life, and would certainly have been its consequence. 
They were more successful in the hunt than the hunters them- 
selves. As the primitive man is uncompromising in the asser- 
tion of his own excellencies, and as the evening meal at the 
camp-fire was a recognized occasion for the boastings of prow- 
ess and pride, their greater success was, no doubt, duly dwelt 
upon by the planters, and the upshot was that the hunters 
treacherously killed all their guests in a single night. Com- 
plaint was made to the head men of the hunters by the 
planters, but it was treated with contempt ; the murderers 
were commanded to make some trivial reparation. There- 
upon the planters determined to take a favorable occasion 
for revenge ; and the hunters, anticipating such a course, 
began war at once— a war in which the hunters, or Adiron- 
dacs, were successful at first, and in which the planters, or 
Iroquois, were driven from their original home and into the 
Cayuga and Seneca Lake country ; but which ended in the 
extermination of the hunters. 

In this story, drawn from Cadwalader Colden's account 
of the ''Five Nations," we get a glimpse of the life and 
conduct of man at that stage of his existence when he is 
yet a denizen of the forest— only the most noteworthy of the 
wild animals; and we see the very inception of those 
radical differences that produce national characteristics, 



PEIMAET PEESO:S-AL SOVEEEIGI^TY. 31 

m 

and the first step in the activities that ultimately make up 
history. Our Ulustration is drawn from the chronicle of a 
comparatively unhistoric people that it may be the more 
indisputably an account of the times '^ when wild in woods 

the naked savage ran." 

If a tribe finaUy discovers some place to which the flood 
does not mount, and where famine never comes, it must dis- 
pute the possession of this favored seat with constant waves 
of later comers sent on their migrations by causes similar 
to those that drove it thither ; and it must fight for its 
favored home as constantly as a champion fights for his 
trophy. War then becomes a supreme test, and the victor 

retains the prize. 

HI. —War may be conducted in any way, but it is suc- 
cessfully conducted only in accordance with mUitary 
principles ; and the one military principle which applies 
alike to aU conditions of humanity is the requirement of a 
common supreme direction— an individual command. It is 
a necessity of success in military operations that an ab- 
solute and unqualified control should be exercised by a 
single commander ; and states survive through many wars, 
in proportion as their organization gives efi^ect to this 
imperative principle, or they are swept away as they 

neglect or ignore it. 

In the primary human activity, therefore, we see the 
continuance of states made dependent by the facts upon a 
principle which, while it preserves the state, does this in the 
proportion only in which it produces a system that subordi- 
nates all the persons in the state to one ruler. This principle 
is in operation at aU stages. Whether the groups may prop- 
erly be called states, or are only isolated tribes, those are 
swept away that are less organized as indicated, and those 
survive in which the principle is more effectively applied. 



33 AI^^CIENT STATES. 

Eaces or trilbes wMcli accepted this principle not only 
survived, Ibut they extirpated those which did not. Obvi-' 
onsly this supposes that on other points the conflict was 
equal, and in the ultimate trial it certainly was ; that is to 
say, tribes altogether unequal fought themselves down ' 
until there were left in any district only the few stronger ; 
and these were nearly enough equal to give the victory to 
the one that most rigorously applied the military principle. 
It is not pretended that primitive savages had intelligent 
perceptions of military science, but only that the facts at 
the basis of that science made themselves felt in the first as 
they have in all later wars. Seen or not in their operation, 
they were seen always in their consequences. 

Force, therefore, and necessity were behind the principle 
that gave supreme authority into the hands of one man 
for every occasion which exercised the general activity ; 
and the acceptance of this principle by all states as they 
grew, was compeUed by an alternative no less than that of 
national annihilation and universal slavery. Every nation 
that did not, in war, submit all its power to the direction of 
one wiU, disappeared, and did not leave a record of its 
existence. Indeed, the acceptance of the principle is 
emphatic in exact proportion to the warlike character of 
nations ; it is only absent where industry and commerce 
were the more prevalent activities. In states of this charac- 
ter it appears casually, merely for the case of actual wars, 
and disappears upon the return of peace, with more or less 
civil conflict for and against it, as in Carthage ; while in 
those countries where wars were well nigh incessant, it be- 
came acknowledged not only as the necessity of war, but 
the state accepted for all time the principle and system of 
war organization, and did not soften its severity for the 
accidental mtervals of peace. Cities were only military 



PEIMAEY PEESOITAL SOVEEEIGIITTY. 33 

cautonments, where the soldiers' lints grew to he houses 
and the commander's headquarters became a palace. 

War, therefore, the principle force in shaping early 
societies, favored and produced an organization that gave 
supreme authority into the hands of a single person ; and 
communities, in proportion as they failed to adopt tliis 
form, disorganized themselves, reduced their capacity for 
defence or aggression, and prepared the way for their 
extirpation ; and in proportion as they organized themselves 
on this principle, survived and grouped around them con- 
quered or otherwise subordinated tribes and became great 
states. 

In this way an individual leadership, the exercise of 
supreme power by a single person, becoming recognized as 
the necessary condition of national precedency in the great 
original activity of the race of men, attained its first hold, 
and secured itself against the instinctive opposition of per- 
sonal impulses, and, therefore, is always present in primi- 
tive conditions, and is more or less absolute as there is 
present more or less capacity to perceive its needfulness, or 
to perceive that the occasions which made it imperative 
have passed away. 

Our finding this as a fact everywhere is sufficient for us,, 
since this inquiry proceeds upon facts ; but it seems also' 
that it is so clearly accounted for upon any proper view of 
the conditions of primitive life that we might have been 
justly astonished if the fact had been otherwise. 

lY. — All conditions of society anterior to control of this 

kind precede, as said above, the existence of states ; they 

belong to a period of human history where there is an 

aggregation of people, but not a political unity. Definite 

organization of the people has not occurred, either because 

it has not been required, or because the resistance of per- 
3 



f \ 



\ . ' 



34 ANCIEITT STATES. 

sonal impnlses was greater than tlie strength of the or- 
ganizing effort. No danger has presented itself of snch a 
magnitude as to overcome all impulses except those of 
escape from it, or provision against it. 

In that primary social condition there is but little 
government. There is none in the ordinary sense; hut 
provision is made on a common system for every emergency 
as it arises ; and that system of accidental operation is all 
there is analogous to government. That system is summed 
up in the generalization— which may have heen the first 
made by humanity, and is not yet out of date— old men 
for council and young men for war. There is a council of 
old men for common understanding of what is willed and 
what is wise, and there is a leader of the people, or rather 
-of the " war party "—the men who go out to battle. Aside 
from this there is only a patriarchal supervision of the acts 
<of individuals. Families are responsible for their mem- 
bers. 

This was the condition formerly in Europe, and in 

America with the Indians of the Atlantic slope. It is the 
> condition now in parts of Asia and Africa. Senator, 
alderman, starost, akshal, sachem— all these words signify, 
in so many languages, an old man ; and they are an evi- 
dence of the function of age in widely separated countries. 
^'But when an old man is present," says Homer, ''he looks 
equally to the past and to the future, that the best result 
may come to all parties." It is the primitive evident idea 
of a wise councillor. What constantly occurs we are apt to 
deem rational; but so far as we can judge of what is 
rational, apart from the notion thus derived from experi- 
ence, this usage seems consonant with reason ; and where 
reason and fact seem to concur in the most general and 
invariable way, we are justified in believing the fact to be 



PEIMARY PEESONAL SOVEEEIGTTTY. 35 

one of universal hnman tendency. That war should be 
the sphere of youth, as council is of age, is obvious ; "but 
Ibrave leaders would he distinguished for special services 
Iby particular qualities— the impulse of Ajax, the skill of 
Achnies, the sagacity of Ulysses— each of these would 
"become supreme in different occasions. 

But personal precedency may rest equally on brave 
leadership in war or wise advice in council ; and the asso- 
ciation of youth and age respectively with war and council 
is not strict. Successful leadership in war does not always 
depend upon personal hardihood, the attribute of youth, 
but often also upon the sagacity derived from experience, 
which, in its highest degree, is an attribute of age. And as 
age may thus have its standing in war, so may youth in 
council through eloquence. Thus, while the rule of the 
ancient generalization is the common one, there is enough 
exception to it to deprive it of the character of an absolute 

law. 

v.— Great leaders, therefore, become supreme for given 
occasions by the operation of an institution that is not so 
much national as human. 

But the great leader— who might also be a wise adviser 
—would still not be a king, and when peace came would 
lapse to his former relation. But his relation would change 
in the circumstances which would give the conception of 
the need of a more positive unity for peace as well as for 
war to the whole people. It might be his own conception 
realized by the force at his control ; it might be a general 
conception realized through him by consent. If we should 
say that states are precipitated, we should perhaps give a 
truer idea of the character of this change than could be 
given in any other word. Out of the innate forces of facts 
suddenly brought into new relations comes this product. 



36 A]srciE:N^T states. 

If a great leader coincides with a great occasion, the rela- 
tionship becomes permanent. It requires the moral force 
of a great constitutional system, and the will of an intelli- 
gent nation, to resist the tendency, even in modern times. 
Primitively it was irresistible. 

Savage nature even compels the change from a tribal 
system merely because it cannot compromise. Savages 
accept only necessity ; they yield to force ; and in the battle 
between tribes in primitive days there were no treaties of 
peace, but the tribe that conquered was compelled to 
destroy all the others, or to put them under its feet in 
absolute subordination. In the most barbarous condition 
they were killed ; in a time when life had become artificial, 
they were made slaves ; but, in a middle condition, there 
was a process which disposed of them, apparently with 
equal efficacy, without resort to either of these extremes. 
They were absorbed. In all savage tribes there were usages 
of adoption, which we may rather caU absorption, because 
the word adoption has acquired a modern significance that 
unfits it to give a notion of the character or consequences 
of the process. It was not so much a social change of place 
and relations from one tribe to another— which left the man 
what he was except as to his place— as it was a sort of social 
digestion, absorption and assimilation by which he recog- 
nized that his former existence had passed away, and that 
he had acquired a new one. Contrary to what we might 
suppose, savages— perhaps from the force of habit— recog- 
nized and accepted this early institution, and even seem to 
have taken a pride in thus becoming part of the superior 
community. Love of home and adherence to kindred are, 
indeed, the virtues of civilization. They controlled or 
dominated the rudimentary intellect less than admiration 
for the splendid qualities that ensured success in war. 



PRI^AIARY PERSO]^AL SOVEEEIGNTY. 37 

Barbarous man can more readily accept association with 
the lorave and the successful than adhere to a beaten and 

degraded race. 

But this process had important consequences with re- 
gard to the conquerors, especiaUy where applied on a large 
scale. An individual man actually has a past life blotted 
out by new associations, forgets his old hates, predUections, 
tastes, and accepts new ones. We are the creatures of an 
influence that results from our effect upon one another. 
Where twelve or twenty men are together, there is some- 
thing more present than twelve or twenty multiplications of 
one man. There is the possibility of a new power, as with 
twelve or twenty faggots there may be a fire. There is the 
power to retain, to nourish, to keep alive that impalpable 
force, those insubstantial characteristics which are lost by 
the individual alone, but which out of so many human 
animals constitute humanity. Evidently this force pre- 
vented, in the early societies, the complete assimilation of 
conquered enemies when on any occasion they were numer- 
ous enough to keep in relation with one another, and so to 
keep alive the vital fire of a former condition. It was, 
perhaps, this that ultimately made slavery necessary. But 
before it went to that length it made necessary a constant 
control of the social units which had not previously existed. 
It opposed to the humanity of the dominant society a 
hostUe humanity that was not in liarmony and did not sub- 
mit, and that thus compelled control to prevent troubles 
which may many times have led to disintegration. Since 
tribes weakened by war actually recruited their strength 
by these adoptions of enemies, this process was always 

imminent. 

It is in accordance with the operation of human facta 
generally that the members of the original society at first 



38 ANCIENT STATES. 

conceived this control as applicalble only to the obnoxious 
elements, and were startled to find some day that the rnde 
methods of authority either could not or would not make 
a distinction which, perhaps, seemed to them more olbvious 
than it really was. It is not only in the ancient world that 
peoples have awakened as from slumber to the discovery 
that a force maintained to keep down dangerous elements 
in the state, or near it, is commanded upon the conception 
that the people themselves are as much to be controlled 
as the inimical elements. 

At a more advanced period this principle applies not 
merely to the absorbed elements but to conquered neigh- 
bors ; and then, of course, with greater vigor. Enemies 
whose destruction as tribes was not thought necessary, 
justify greater precautions. They were made subject and 
became tributaries or political satellites. This eventually 
placed the whole conquering people in the position of 
conquered enemies. But conquest was not the only source 
of this relation of feebler neighbors. Fear of one great 
tribe often animated the appeal for the goodwill or inter- 
ference of another ; and as a hostile tribe was at first often 
the danger that compelled the closer adhesion of many 
families into one aggregate defensive body, so the same 
danger consolidated many tribes into one league, looser or 
more intimate as circumstances might determine. But the 
subjection, however brought about, of many tribes to the 
leadership and control of one, imposed upon this one the 
obligations of defending them, and in some cases of gov- 
erniDg them. As there was then no other conception of 
government but that of an individual head, such a ruler 
was delegated from the dominant tribe. He ruled them as 
the creatures of the greater will, in virtue of whose power 
he was there ; and he became practically an anticipation of 



PEIMABY PEESOIS-AL SOVEEEIGT^TY. 



39 



the later al)Soliite sovereign who rests Ms authority on 
divine right ; for the tribe from which he was delegated 
stood in "the supreme relation of a political deity. With 
several subject tribes ruled in this way by one man, a new 
aspiration arose above the horizon of human thought. He 
was like those beasts who are thought to be reasonably 
tractable till, through some accidental scratch, they have 
tasted human blood, when they acquire an untamable 
ferocity. He had tasted royal sovereignty. How could 
C^sar, who had been as a god in Gaul, become one of the 
crowd in Rome ? How could the great soldiers and nobles 
of the imperial city, who had governed with absolute 
authority in Sicily, in Gaul, in Africa, Spain, Germany, 
and Asia, fail to fesl the desire to subject the city in the 
same way, or fail to observe that the method so success- 
ful elsewhere was the real remedy for civil dissensions. 

Thus always the dominion we exercise over an enemy 
returns in a dominion equally exercised over ourselves, and 
in our rule of a conquered foe we give the measure of the rule 
that is to come home to us in its application to ourselves. 
Free states cannot hold other states subject by military 
force without nourishing that repressive power that is in 
turn to reduce their freedom also. 

Conquest constantly bridges over the interval between 
leadership and sovereignty. WarUke chiefs lead bands of 
their comrades and adherents into neighboring countries 
and there either perish or overcome the natives, and in the 
countries they thus seize establish sovereignties that are 
commonly durable, and have often become great states. 
In Germany and the Scandinavian countries many early 
kingdoms arose in this way ; and the Danish, and even the 
Roman dominion in England was of the same character. 
Whether the relation of kingship, therefore, arises by the 



40 A]S'cie:n^t states. 

coming in of a conqueror or Iby the corruptions dne to the 
introduction of the conquered, the fundamental idea of the 
royal relation is that of a commander of conquerors to the 
"beaten enemy. 

yi. — In the seventh century before the Christian era, 
that mountain region of Asia which lies between the river 
Tigris and the Caspian Sea was occupied, as it had been for 
many centuries previously, by loose groups of a great race of 
men whose principal seat was further east ; and these groups 
had been made tributary by their powerful neighbors, the 
great Assyrian monarchs, whose capital, Mneveh, was in 
the valley of the Tigris. At the period mentioned a certain 
Cyaxares, of the race of these mountaineers, came to them 
at the head of a large migration from their primitive home 
in Bactria, having been either crowded out by over-popu- 
lation, or driven out in unsuccessful wars. He induced the 
men of the region to enter into a combination with his 
immediate followers, and revolt against the Assyrians ; and 
he organized them for the war and led them in the battle. 
They were beaten by the superior organization and disci- 
pline of the less savage people. In this conflict his men 
were loose bands that held together by the slightest tenure ; 
but this capable leader caught up the Assyrian system, 
organized his men on that plan, and led them again, with 
such success this time as to compel the enemy to take 
refuge in his walled cities. 

He immediately began preparations to pursue the victory 
against these, but his efforts were cut short by intelligence 
that the mountain lands of his supporters were devastated 
by hordes of Scythians from further north, impelled against 
them by the same impulse of half savage humanity that 
impelled them in turn against the Assyrians. He turned, 
therefore, and hurried to the defence of the homes of his 



PEIMAEY PEESONAL SOYEEEIGNTY. 



41 



people. But the Scythian advance was not a summer 
shower of invasion. It was, on the contrary, one of those 
storms of barbarous nomads that at times sweep the face of 
the earth ; and Cyaxares, crushed in battle, was content to 
pay tribute. He thus became fortified in a position of 
recognized sovereignty by a process that we shall again see 
applied on a large scale— the demand of a dominant foe 
that there shall be some one person responsible to them for 
the tribute from his people, some head that they shall cut 
off if the tribute is not promptly paid, and hands whose 
authority it is their direct interest to strengthen with a view 
to this duty. In all primitive rule the splendor of sover- 
eignty is dimmed by this very distinct principle that the 
people are to be punished in the person of the ruler, and 
that he is the sacrifice to placate supreme anger. Out of 
this principle came the Eussian autocracy. 

But as the Scythians or Tartars thinned out their num- 
bers by the extension of their conquests, the hopes of 
Cyaxares and his Medes arose. They watched their oppor- 
tunity and killed the Scythian leaders treacherously at a 
banquet, and there was left in the country of their invasion 
no more trace than of ''a snow-storm or hurricane." At- 
tention was now again turned to Assyria. Over that also 
the Scyths had swept, and left it a broken and feeble 
power; and now Cyaxares found no longer the defiant 
organization of great armies to oppose, but, extending his 
alliances in every direction, advanced to the destruction of 
Nineveh ; and in the fire of these wars was forged the 
Median kingdom. 

This is the typical process of the origin of ancient sov- 
ereignties. 

In such an outline of an event that constantly occurred 
in the ancient world we obtain what Aristotle deemed the 



42 



ANCIEI^T STATES. 



iinattainalble desideratum of political science, a perception 
of "states in their genesis," and see Ilow a warlike l)reed 
of men contribute the force that forges a great kingdom out 
of their conquered neighbors, and eventually take their 
own place in the state on the same level with those whom 
they have subjected to a conqueror's will, or at best stand 
one step higher as nobles possessed of a few inconsiderable 
privileges. 

YII. — Absolute dominion over a whole people thus im- 
posed upon them through their necessities, tends to continue 
itself and to apply its force without consciousness of the 
nature of its origin or comprehension of its proper limits. 
It restrains men from the indulgence in their natural im- 
pulses, and this, as the world changes and the basis of 
authority becomes different, it can only do when, because 
of the apparent propriety of the restraint, the common will 
cannot be gathered into op|)osition. 

Against this original power, therefore, a conflict is inces- 
santly carried on by the opposing human energy— the im- 
pulse of the subjected ones to be released from the restraints 
which authority imposes, and which are valid only while 
necessary to the organic vitality, and which, as they are 
always on trial, fall when the force that assails is greater 
than that which sustains. 

Restraint is irksome and revolt results ; for revolt is the 
exercise of those energies which are the attributes of life, 
and restraint is the limitation of that exercise ; and as it is 
the function of authority to restrain, as restraint on a 
larger or smaller scale is the essence of its operation, it is 
beforehand written in the very laws of human nature that 
there shall be a charm in strife against its decrees, and that 
it shall be continued in conflict, and shall be tried by it, 
and shall be supreme never otherwise than as it can compel 



PEIMAET PEESOKAL SOYEEEIGI^TY. 43 

obedience. From its origin, therefore, anthority is the 
exercise of control Iby force, and it has no other primary 
right, and no other charter, than its power. It controls 
hecanse it is superior to the aggregate of resistance, and it 
can only continue while it retains this superiority. 

Authority controls the parts for the sake of the whole ; 
it is the necessary conservative power ; it aggregates, pre- 
sumably, aU thoughts into one wiU, and thus makes possible 
the political unity ; it is salutary within its limits, but tends 
to exceed them as well as to perpetuate itself beyond 
the period in which it is legitimate. Opposed to it is the 
natural elasticity that reacts fi^om its restraints and repres- 
sions, endeavors to qualify it, and while recognizing its 
legitimacy m a certain sphere, denies it beyond that sphere ; 
operates not only to limit the applications of its force, but 
to dissect the force and distribute its elements in different 
hands, thus organizing the control with a view to the 
liberty of the individuals considered as units as weU as to 
the central conservative force. But the second activity also 
tends to exceed the limits of safety, and does so according 
as it finds a congenial atmosphere in national character— 
which character, of coui'se, varies with different nations, 
and with the same nations at different periods. 

On the one hand, therefore, the great endeavor of politi- 
cal activity is to escape from the restraints of authority ; on 
the other, to maintain those restraints ; and the character, 
quality, and permanence of nations, as well as theu' per- 
sistence in certain forms, or more accurately at certain 
stages, may be referred to the triumph, continued or tem- 
porary, of one of these ; and the vigor of these activities 
respectively, and the consequent movement or progress of 
the nation, is in proportion to its social growth or general 
vitality. 



44 ANCIENT STATES. 

But this conflict is not, in its earliest period at least, 
identical witli the struggle for liberty, wMch endeavors to 
lighten the pressure of authority within the limits of national 
safety. It is rather a blind, instinctive revolt, v^hich 
respects no limits whatever, and in its last ferocity fights 
as desperately against the very existence of the state as it 
does against the head of the state. It is late in the history 
of states before the revolt is definitely aimed at this legiti- 
mate point of the mere reduction of the repressions of 
authority. Only then does the confiict lose its wild ex- 
travagance. Men assent to the existence of the state as a 
provision for the general welfare, and in that assent yield 
all that part of their desire for freedom which would make 
freedom inconsistent with the existence of regxdated 
authority. Their aspiration is no longer for a general 
release from the pressure of authority, but they wish 
to be relieved from the pressure at particular points. They 
demand their freedom to do certain acts, and they dispute 
among themselves, pro and con, as to the safety of the 
liberties thus demanded ; some holding that they do not 
touch upon the sphere of acts that are vital to the existence 
of states ; others holding that if the freedom demanded is 
accorded, the state wiU perish. Sooner or later all the 
interests of the society are involved in this dispute ; and for 
and against authority the activity assumes all known forms, 
from the rational to the military extremes. In this dispute 
all the varying views of ages are taken as to the functions 
of government and its more strict or liberal relation to the 
people ; and through this conflict the pressure of power is 
softened till it meets the more or less extreme demands, and 
begins on a new basis ; or while it stands, even the mildest 
form of sovereignty is made milder to the common mind by 
the fiction that the ruler does not enforce his own will, but 



PEIMAEY PERSOITAL SOYEEEIGISTTY. 45 

is the delegate of a superior power— an abstraction that 
theories contemplate as a sovereign entity. 

YIII.— The fact that the prince is at once commander, 
judge, and high priest, implies that his will is the last 
resort of the people, whether it is expressed in concerns that 
relate to war, or is declared as the law, or touches upon 
supernatural conceptions, and exhibits the conduct of the 
prince toward the earliest endeavors of the oligarchical ele- 
ments to dispute his supremacy. 

Every early authority is brought, sooner or later, to 
recognize the higher authority of the gods, and to present 
its own decrees as without force in the presence of contrary 
decrees having a divine source. Nominally, the power 
that thus disputes the supremacy of authority is some god ; 
really it is that group of persons which 'interprets" the 
will of the gods. Sovereigns who are wise provide that this 
appeal to divine authority, which can foil all their plans if 
against them, shall always be under their control ; and a 
favored process, with this object in view, has been to assert 
a divine relationship. They announce themselves as the 
descendants or familiars of the gods, and therefore, as the 
most proper intercessors, they make themselves high priests. 
Moses, David, Numa, Manco Capac, and Hiawatha are 
familiar instances of this step. Agamemnon officiated as 
high priest at the sacrifices in the camp before Troy. In 
modern times '' divine right" is a survival of this ancient 
bit of statecraft, and the state church starts from this point. 
By this process the function of intercession with the gods— 
the priestly function— is added to the first normal function of 
the sovereign, which is that of commander of the forces. He 
acquires also, naturally, a third function, which was at first 
priestly. He is not only commander of the forces and high 
priest, but he is, as well, the judge of the people. His 



46 Al^CIENT STATES. 

sense of what is just is the standard of primitive life. This 
third function has also continued in the political fictions 
down to the present day. In theory, an executive is still 
commander of the forces, head of the state church (where 
this exists), and the power from which, by delegation or 
appointment, the judiciary derives its authority ; and these 
functions were the original elements of the sovereign oflSce. 
The races of men differ in their disposition to attribute 
occurrences to divine agency — to see the intercession of the 
gods in every event. As they are superstitious or warlike, 
or as their lives have the complexity that leads to disputes, 
the destinies of the states they organize differ from this 
point. In one case the priestly function of the ruler may 
grow so as to absorb the sovereignty, and the other func- 
tions be delegated ; in another case the sovereign may con- 
tinue to command the forces in war, and the priestly office 
become of less consequence. In Eome the Pontifex under- 
went a sort of political atrophy. It remained a life-office 
without political significance. The military function 
dwarfed the priestly as a sovereign attribute. In Japan 
the Mikado ruled for ages, and his military authority was 
lodged with the captain of his guard, who, as Tycoon, 
eventually disputed the sovereign power. Through the 
operation of causes peculiar to each case, some one func- 
tion became predominant in every state. Commonly it 
was the military function ; sometimes it was the priestly, 
and less often the judicial. Some nations were ruled 
by soldiers, some by priests, and some by judges ; that 
is to say, the other functions became of so much less 
consequence beside the one to which circumstances gave 
the lead, that they fell out of sight comparatively, and 
the sovereign was designated by reference to the one im- 
portant function. 



PEIMAEY PEESOKAL SOVEEEIGNTY. 47 

By delegation of the other fanctions, therefore, there 
Ibegan a division and distribution of the sovereign office, 
and the individual sovereignty lost its all-sufficient charac- 
ter. Other men stood before the people on the same level 
with the ruler, and this assisted the operation of those 
changes in the tendency of national life which weakened 
this primary form. 

As life acquired more complexity, and the political 
machinery involved more various functions, this process in 
the disintegration of the sovereignty went further. If the 
paramount or kingly dignity was regarded as pertaining to 
the military, or the judicial, or to the sacerdotal function— 
and in various countries it was associated with each, and 
even moved from one to another— then each office was in its 
turn subjected to a dissection not dissimilar to that which 
had made three offices of the first office. Around the royal 
commander there grew what, in modern style, would be 
called his staff, and every subdivision of function thus 
found to be convenient, gave rise to a permanent political 

office. 

This subdivision went to such a point that it was at last 
difficult to tell what remained to royalty itself but some 
family name ; and the people, at the instigation of jealous 
opponents, would consider that one family name might be 
as good as another. Hostility, moreover, often gained a 
vantage ground of great consequence in the possession of its 
share of the important offices that resulted from this second- 
ary distribution of the sovereignty. 

IX.— Out of personal supremacy, therefore, arises the 
first royalty ; but the heroic monarch, who was regarded 
as the first among equals, is not the permanent type of the 
primary sovereign, for in the first ai)pearance of the many 
as subordinate on an extensive scale, we find them sub- 



48 AIS-CIEIS-T STATES. 

jected to a conqueror, and merged only in a hopeless rather 
than in a happy consent. 

Political vitality then appears to he identical with re- 
action against this superior will ; against this sovereign as 
the first fact of political organization antagonistic forces 
array themselves, and the life of the nation is made np of 
great occasions when the sovereignty is the organ of the 
national will, and other occasions when the nation contem- 
plates it only as a repressive agency, and labors for its 
disintegration. 

In the nnmber of facts which give always an effective 
occasion against the sovereignty is to be counted the 
frequent repetitions of those out of which it arose ; the 
sovereign does not permanently continue the greatest man 
or the most capable soldier, and if the test of war is con- 
tinuously applied he is set aside precisely as he was 
brought forth. Ordinarily, however, this is only an opera- 
tion against an individual, and not against the form of 
state; but it does happen that this is one of the steps 
by which the progress is made to the next political form. 
Darius and his comrades present an instance of this. 

Revolt against the sovereignty — revolt that is a mere 
expression of political elasticity, reaction against the neces- 
sary pressure of authority, runs through ages of the history 
of all these early states, until a point is reached at which 
the revolt permanently prevails, and an individual sov- 
ereignty is in any given state definitely put aside ; but this 
point is not determined by the greater vigor of the final 
revolt. The constant triumph of the sovereign, or the 
success of the effort against him, is determined by facts 
related to the growth of the nation or the change in 
circumstances external to it; for the permanency of the 
state remains dependent upon the military issue unless 



PEIMARY PEES0:N"AL SOVEEEIGXTY. 



49 



the nation is no longer surrounded by warlike neighbors, 
or has itseK ceased to be inspired by the military spiiit. 

Sovereign power overcomes all the efforts against it 
through the whole period in which the life of the na- 
tion is filled with warlike activities ; and the possibility 
of successful resistance in any case is in proportion to the 
degree in which in the life of the society the pursuits and 
activities of peace have displaced those of war. J^ations 
that remained constantly warlike from their origin till 
their decay, never changed their form of government from 
this type; and others, in times nearer our own, have 
modified it in accordance with the necessities of modern 
military systems rather than lost it. Nations, again, 
that have made a certain progress toward the proper 
substitution for this form, have been plunged into long 
wars, that have put away indefinitely the possibility of 
change, and have thus, by passing critical points in the 
world's history, retained this sort of rudimentary govern- 
ment to a comparatively advanced point in their civili- 
zation ; have suffered, in fact, a partial arrest of develop- 
ment. There are, however, upon the whole, but few 
exceptions to the rule that the growth of such a social 
condition and such perceptions of their mutual interests 
as enables nations to live at peace with then- neighbors, 
strengthens and gives the victory in every state to the ele- 
ments that oppose the pressure of individual authority. 

In the origin of states, consequently, the principles of 
political vitality in operation are such as make the per- 
manency of the state depend upon the degree in which it 
produces personal supremacy, and subordinates every will 
in the state to some one will ; but these principles having 
produced legitimately organization of the military type, 
inevitably provoke reaction toward the more primitive con- 



50 ANCIENT STATES. 

dition ; and tlie success or failure of tMs reaction— tliat is, 
the continuance of the military type or its change— will "be 
determined by the internal condition of the state as to its 
social advance, or the external condition as to the exist- 
ence near it of powerful enemies, for this necessarily oper- 
ates to compel the retention of the strictly military system. 



CHAPTEE IIIo 



THE OLIGARCHY. 



I. — OligarcMcal goyernments filled in all ancient states 
the period Ibetween tlie decay of the personal sovereignty 
and the discovery of political methods by which the will of 
the whole vital part of the community conld be brought to 
bear upon the destinies of the nation. It was a period of 
transition, but there was no aspiration beyond the theory 
of oligarchical rule on the part of those who endeavored to 
establish this system. It was also a period of incessant 
conflict on the one hand for restoration, which sometimes 
resulted in accidental tyrannies, and on the other hand for 
a share in the privileges or liberties acquired. 

Societies that had outgrown the conditions which made 
the primary sovereignty necessary, inevitable and salutary, 
produced this form spontaneously because it requii'ed the 
consent and co-operation of many of the more vigorous 
spirits in the state to overcome the princely domination, and 
these could not settle their respective claims to advantage 
in the change otherwise than by a system which distributed 
the functions of the sovereign ofiice. But in the origin of 
this form the tendency to reaction is so vigorous that it is 
not established without a continued conflict, in which 
either side wins by turns, and the system is oligarchical 
one day and regal another. Personal domination has not 
yet lost all its relation to the facts of political life, and 
the very war consequent upon the efibrt to expel the prince 



52 A]^CIEKT STATES. 

presents the case that favors the success of an individual 
ruler. But the l)attle is tenaciously maintained, and the 
few cases in which a final victory rests with the prince, are 
found in circumstances where the conflict dwarfed and de- 
stroyed the national vitality. 

Monarchy and oligarchy are respectively the govern- 
ments that appear when one or another of the elements of 
the population dominates, and their succession in the order 
dven is due to the fact that the growth of the elements, and 
the classes formed from them, proceeds in this order. It 
circumstances should change the order of the development 
of the classes, then the governments would also come in a 
different order. As the conditions which gave supremacy to 
a personal ruler pass away, the military form is qualified ; 
as the numerous great lords can thereby dispute for power 
with one another, the oligarchy grows ; and as commerce, 
industry, the various pursuits of the many increase in im- 
portance, the growth of democratic forms pushes the 
oligarchy from the scene. It follows, therefore, that the 
next step, as the oligarchy becomes weakened, will derive 
its character from the capability and condition of the 
nation. As one or another element is stronger than aU the 
power that can be combined against it, and can therefore 
act its own will despite aU inclinations to the contrary, the 
further advance win vary ; the capacity of the nation to 
follow its destiny in this respect being qualified always by 
the external conditions in operation at the time. If the 
fame of the royal race have such a hold upon men's minds, 
either for good reasons, or through a childish condition of 
the general intellect, and war or other external needs stiU 
seems to require a personal leader, then the nation will in 
aU probability prove unequal to the advance for which the 
way lies open, and the state wHl recur under the cover of 



THE OLIGAECHY. 53 

one or another formality or pretence to its previous condi- 
tion, and will become subject to a personal will. If the 
many are the dominant element, and have assisted the few 
to overthrow the king from a perception of the possibilities, 
the state will drift toward democracy more or less rapidly 
as the wisdom of the few interposes barriers, and as they 
use discreetly the power that falls into theii' hands. If the 
oligarchs prevail, they wiU organize government on a basis 
of privilege, excluding the many from participation, and 
dividing power and honor strictly among themselves. In 
this event the oligarchs will appear in a different light from 
that in which they were seen before the abolition of the 
royal power, for the oligarchy that comes before the nation 
as a remedy against many evils, and the oligarchy that 
appears as an oppression and an obstruction to further 
progress, seem two very different forms ; but the change is, 
perhaps, not so much in the governments as in the eyes 
with which they are contemplated. It is the growth of 
thought in the people which leads them to regard as 
oppressive those acts in their government which half a 
century earlier they would have deemed in the highest 
degree liberal ; but we always believe that the change is in 
the object we contemplate, not in ourselves, as uninstructed 
observation deems that the sun goes round and our own 
planet stands still. 

II.— States of this nature were classified by ancient 
authors under many different names derived from the 
specific character of the oligarchs. If these were mainly 
the rich men of the community, the state was called a 
plutocracy ; if they were priests, it was a hagiocracy ; if 
generals, a stratocracy, and so on ; but all these names 
intended a state in which the supreme control was in the 
hands of those intermediate persons above the many and 



54 AI^CIEITT STATES. 

"below the prince, wlio were empTiatically called ^'the 
few" (oAiyoi— whence oligarchy). 

Near to " the best and bravest man " stand always many 
others who claim that they are not different from him by 
other than imaginary distinctions. 

This section of the society is composed in every case of 
definitely recognizable elements. It is made up of the 
heads and sons of important families, the priests generally ; 
the military commanders— some of whom were, perhaps, 
originally rivals of the supreme leader, and his inferiors in 
the battle by differences so slight that they deny the exist- 
ence of any— disaffected relatives of nobles who have been 
driven into exile or summarily sacrificed to the royal anger ; 
magnates and functionaries near the sovereign's person; 
and, commonly, all vile persons who have been raised to 
fortune and station by the prince's preference, and who 
count to establish themselves in a newly acquired brother- 
hood with nobility by flagrant exhibitions of sympathy with 
the higher classes in their resistance to the ruler. 

All these impress the common mind of the nation with 
respect, if not awe, by their splendor, and, perhaps, even by 
great qualities ; while they are themselves near enough to the 
level of the sovereign ruler to contemplate him in his merely 
human aspects, and to be animated against him by the 
common hates, jealousies or rivalries. All revolt against 
the primary personal sovereignty, however it may originate, 
obtains intelligent direction and vital force from classes 
thus defined, who foment every tendency to popular dis- 
content that may serve their ends, and present themselves 
to the popular mind as the friends of the people, and 
organize and maintain the conflict. 

In the ''Iliad" we may see how it was with the heroic 
nations ; for, although this aggregate was not a state, it was 



THE OLIGAECHY. 55 

operated on principles of snlbordination precisely analogous 
to those of the states of the period ; and it is more useful for 
comparison "because better known than the history of any 
ancient state. Agamemnon is "the man to whom the 
people have been entrusted ;" but there are many heroes 
not inferior in any great quality, and only slightly less in dig- 
nity. Achilles, Ulysses, the Ajaces, Idomeneus are equally 
ready to resent any unnecessary assertion of superiority, 
and the revolt of one is the theme of the poem. But this re- 
volt does not reach an effective point against the prince until 
defeat, discouragement and discontent have taken posses- 
sion of the mind of the nation ; and, weary with the waste 
of an ill-directed war in which the ruin of all seems to be 
involved in the assertion of the dignity of one family, the 
case of every one becomes confounded with the quarrel of a 
man who can make head against the oppressor. This points 
to the picture as typical. It was, in fact, as it is in the Iliad ; 
and in every tribe, in every city, in every group where a 
leader had made himself sovereign, there were many who 
bore to him the relation that the Grecian heroes bore to Aga- 
memnon. All such combined against the ruler. Not once 
merely ; not on any special or single occasion, but commonly 
and constantly. They never lost an opportunity. They 
were put down in repeated instances of failure with such 
severity as the condition of society would peraiit ; and every 
time that they were thus suppressed the central authority 
gained strength at their expense. Eevolt against him gave 
the sovereign a good reason to deal with the great ones whose 
very existence in the state menaced and limited his suprem- 
acy, as in a later time Periander dealt with the heads of the 
tall poppies. If the revolt was inspired by a leader like 
Achilles upon a quarrel such as his— that is, upon a personal 
and not a general grievance — it did not necessarily arise 



56 ANCIENT STATES. 

from sucli a condition of society as would make possible 
tlie destruction of tlie sovereignty. It might be snccessfnl, 
but its success might also involve no progress and no 
change but a change of persons. Achilles himself might 
assume the sovereignty, or it would fall into the hands of 
some person not objectionable to him. Substitutions of 
this nature occurred repeatedly in all ancient societies. 

Thus in all conditions of societies that precede the 
growth which makes change of form possible, revolt of a 
character similar to that which is eventually to produce the 
change of form, produces merely a substitution of the 
person of the sovereign, if successful ; and if unsuccessful, 
strengthens the primary form by presenting an occasion for 
the extirpation of all the possible leaders of revolt and often 
of their families and all their relatives. With every op- 
portunity that failure thus furnishes the possibility of 
resistance is made less, and the sovereign becomes in the 
society like a gigantic oak in the forest— in the shadow of 
which other trees cannot thrive, and that draws from the 
earth all the nutriment for a great space. Thus are ab- 
sorbed the natural rights of many, and puny neighbors 
must stand far away to get sunshine till the day when the 
woodman comes. 

But the revolt thus suppressed recurs again and again, 
for it arises from the strictly human impulses, As the 
king must constantly maintain his power by force, it is in 
the nature of things that he shall sometime be found un- 
equal to the trial. He also recruits the ranks of his 
enemies by the severity of the rule that the revolt enforces. 
All the social elements will sooner or later be arrayed to- 
gether against him, and some day the scale will be suddenly 
turned in favor of the resistance by the coincidence of all 
the events that favor it. 



THE OLIGAECHY. 57 

If the growth in the society which increases the personal 
spirit of men so as to make the authority of a prince more 
difficult to endure than it was, coincides with a growth which 
leaves the state without foreign foes, the change h>ecomes 
inevitable. For, primarily, as we have seen, the individual 
power has a necessary relation to the condition in which the 
state exists, and from this relation it derives its warrant 
for supreme authority; hut this supreme authority, the 
need of which is so imperative in the hour of national 
danger, is felt only as an oppression when the danger has 
passed away, and sovereignty of this character has seldom 
elasticity enough to accommodate itself to the widely differ- 
ent facts of war and peace. As the pressure of the sover- 
eignty is recognized as oppressive, as the spirit of the na- 
tion is excited against a discipline the need of which is not; 
apparent in the absence of an enemy, and as the people 
are plundered to support a regal luxury, the conditions- 
tend to give success to the oligarchical revolt. 

III. — An important fact with regard to the growth of the ' 
oligarchical revolution and the consolidation of the power 
of the oligarchs is the attitude toward one another of those ■ 
various divisions of the population that, however originating, , 
become recognized as castes or superior and inferior classes • 
— the different layers of the social stratification which, like • 
the layers of the terrestrial crust, are sometimes so shuffled . 
by volcanic ruptures that the inferior presents itself most 
conspicuously at the surface. In every ancient state, from, 
the very nature of the processes by which the states arose, . 
there was this division due to the presence of dominant and 
subordinate races. Commonly a subordinate race was the 
victim of conquest ; but this was not always the case. 
Sometimes whole divisions of a population were denizens, 
who came into the state voluntarily to push commercial. 



58 ANCIENT STATES. 

opportunities, and had no rights in the political sense, bnt 
acquired the privilege of residence as the Jews did in the 
cities of Europe in the middle ages, and as the Chinese do 
now in the United States. 

Caste or class division never divided into sections any 
originally free or dominant race; and thus this great 
original intrenchment of political or social inequality was 
not in its source so much a wrong and an injustice as a 
mitigation of the hard rule of iDarbaric life. One of the 
conditions upon which a conquering people spared the foe 
they overcame was the reduction of that foe in this way. 
Even as the warlike ants put the drudgery of life upon other 
ants, so warlike man laid the foundations of early societies 
in stages of subordination. 

In its origin caste is color ; and the word in this connec- 
tion hears the idea of race. It is Portuguese ; and is the 
word by which the early explorers of that nationality trans- 
lated into their own language the term which they found 
as an expression of social relations in India. In India, 
perhaps anciently in all countries, there was ultimately, if 
not primarily, a distinction of race in distinction of function. 
Warlike races conquered a land, held the overpowered 
people of the country subject to their will, and extorted 
from them the performance of all labors deemed unworthy 
of soldiers. As the Normans dealt with the Saxons in 
England in the eleventh century, and the Germans with the 
people of France upon the fall of the Roman empire, so 
soldiers did the world over from time immemorial. 

From the history of any nation may be drawn a general 
illustration of these truths ; but there are more facts of this 
class accumulated in the social condition of India than in 
any other country, and the statement of these is the best 
exhibition of this process. 



THE OLIGAECHY. 59 

About five thousand years since India was conquered 
Iby the Aryans, a race of warriors from Central Asia. Be- 
tween the conquerors and the conquered— the solar and 
lunar races— were produced the two castes of Brahmins and 
Kshatriyas. From the blood of the conquerors, preserved 
superstitiously pure, were the Brahmins or priests; from 
unions of the best of the conquered with the conquerors the 
next or warrior caste; below were the merchants and 
husbandmen— the Yarsyas— the conquered without mix- 
ture, while the Sudras were of a breed that had been 
in subjection to those from whom the Aryans conquered the 
country; a bread that had been the victims of a yet earlier 
conquest. 

Successive conquests thus establisli successive scales of 
dignity. Here were at least three races of men with inter- 
mixture only at one point; the lines of division kept at 
first by race prejudices and the conception of superiority. 
But the notion of superiority that at first is inseparably 
attached to the idea of race undergoes a modification, and 
becomes attached at last to the function in life that falls to 
the lot of one or the other of the races. What was a race 
prejudice becomes eventually a prejudice for or against 
given occupations, doubtless from the primary relation 
of the races to these pursuits. 

For an understanding of the conception of greater or 
less dignity in various pursuits it is hardly needful to go 
beyond those common human impulses which are as active 
now as they ever were, and perhaps not more active than 
they always were ; but it is also certain that this conception 
has been intensified always by the relation of certain 
labors to the degraded races. Because a certain functir 
was always performed by a subordinate or enslaved peo^ 
that labor came to be a part of the conception of slavery 



QQ AlSrCIET^T STATES. 

to do it was to put one' s self down to the slave level. Lal)or 
was for slaves in onr Southern States, and poor whites who 
were compelled to labor were held in the prevalent opinions 
to be meaner than slaves, for they had the superior blood, 
yet went to the lower level. 

Some soldier race conquers another and keeps its mem- 
bers down as tillers of the soil ; and thus, as a first fact, 
the society exists in two broadly distinguished parts. Wise 
men from countries already advanced in civilization come 
to them as the Egyptians went to Greece, and a priestly 
order arises. Establisliments for trade are founded, at first 
exclusively on the coast, such as those that the migratory 
commerce of the Phoenicians made for itself everywhere. 
Here ahready are the four divisions such as became crystal- 
lized in the rigid ceremonial spirit of ancient India ; but 
there was nothing in this necessarily peculiar to that time 
or country, for soldiers everywhere despise trade, priests 
from the presumptions of their position must keep them- 
selves apart, and the tendency of every national opinion is 
to the cultivation of prejudices. 

AU the priests and priestly families are separated from 

the others ; all the warriors keep to themselves. Traders 

and tillers of the soil are equally separated from those 

above and from one another. Below these, to borrow for a 

moment the Hindoo view, are ''thirty-six im^erior classes, 

cursed in this world and without hope in the next,"— 

the infinite variety of meaner pursuits not susceptible of 

relation in large groups. How these lower distinctions 

arise we may see by a glance about us in any direction, for 

there is caste everywhere. Every laborer with a hod is 

'espised by the laborer with a hammer; the man with a 

nmer is despised by another with a pen ; and this one 

he person of whose purchases he keeps the record, and 



THE OLIGAECHY. 61 

the purchaser Ibj his neighbor, who in turn is despised "by 
others for forty degrees further. 

In the relation of the classes in their origin we see 
very distinctly a relation of function. As the soldiers are 
the supreme lords, they assign to themselves, in the first 
place, what privileges they choose ; but when the relation 
of supreme lordship has passed away, these privileges re- 
tain their validity through the duty imposed upon this class 
of defending the country. On the other hand the priestly 
order performs functions of scarcely less consequence in 
the propagation of those ideas and principles which lead 
to the moral and intellectual elevation of the nation. 

Such is the most general history of the original sources 
of social inequality in the world ; and in this glimpse we 
note their existence as facts— their relation to one another, 
and to the performance of a function. No moral idea of the 
injustice of subjection can arise here, because it is a boon. 
If the conquered were not prepared to accept subjection the 
alternative would be indiscrimate slaughter on the lost field 
of battle. Ancient and modern men prefer even inequality 

to death. 

But the classes thus created become the organs of social 
and, eventually, of political functions. 

Government in this sense is a machinery for taking from 
the cultivators of the soil a part of the product of their labor 
to give it to the cultivators of things less obviously impor- 
tant. In primitive, as in other societies, the whole number 
must be fed upon those fruits of the earth that are produced 
or gathered by a part ; and the farmers, cattle breeders, 
hunters, or fishermen, who may be a few, thus supply all. 
But the defence of the country and the people is as im- 
portant as food, and without the soldiers' services the 
farmers' grain would have no value ; without the judges in 



Q2 AI^CIENT STATES. 

the courts, or the priests in the temple, his possession of the 
soil upon which the grain grows would scarcely be respected. 
Society, consequently, takes as taxes part of the farmer's 
grain and the shepherd' s wool ; meat from one, wood from 
another, and wine from a third, and distributes these 
products to the soldiers under arms, or to the priest in the 
temple ; for the one who defends the nation, or the one 
whose services propagates those ideas of the gods which, 
in their simple operation, lead to the moral and intellectual 
dignity of the nation, performs a function related to the 
common good fully equivalent to that done loj him who 
raises food from the soil. 

In different societies this process goes far or stops short 
at the barest and most distinct needs, and sometimes it is 
carried so far that all perception of the relation of the 
respective functions of the different parts of society to the 
common advantage is lost, and the laborer is not only 
burdened with the support of the essential services of the 
army, the temple, and the courts, but with an enormous 
increase of burdens attached to these by various fictions 
or trickeries of the law. 

But the transfer practised by government is always just 
while the relation of the duty to the right continues a 
reality ; for while the service rendered by each is indispens- 
able, or is regarded by each as indispensable, it is of no 
moment whether the labor is done in the harvest field or 
the battle field. A laborer in the common cause is entitled 
as part of the national unity to his share of the fruits of the 

soil. 

Every state, therefore, is sustained through the per- 
formance of exceedingly various functions. It is a co- 
operative association in which there is a primitive division 
of labor. Tillers of the soil, handicraftsmen, soldiers, 



THE OLIGAECHY. 63 

priests, labor m their several spheres, all presiimablj for the 
general good ; and the farmer has no more reason to object 
that his crop is taken as taxes to feed the soldier than the 
soldier that his blood is the price of the farmer's safety. 
But while there is a practical and economical recognition 
that each service performed is of indispensable necessity, 
there is a moral judgment that the services rendered are not 
of equal dignity. 

But as the primitive prejudice which adheres to the idea 
of race shifts its ground to the idea of occupation, it there 
becomes susceptible to possibilities of modification and 
change, which in the gro^vth of cities and states at last tend 
to sweep it away ; but within certain limits opinion changes 
in respect to occupation ; and the several occupations are 
higher or lower in the scale of national esteem, according 
as the intellectual constitution of the people or the accidents 
of their relation to nature may determine. Priests have 
precedence in one land, soldiers in another, merchants in a 
third ; and though field labor was extensively esteemed 
servile, yet Cincinnatus went from the plow tail to save his 

country. 

Here again we get a remarkable illustration from the 
history of the Jews. The guilds shut them out from the 
practice of the mechanic arts as an unworthy people ; they 
were kept from the career of arms as miscreants ; they 
could not hold land because they could not enter at any 
point in the feudal scale. They were forced upon a de- 
spised occupation as money changers and money lenders ; 
and to-day that occupation controls and governs the world. 
Similar changes, less extreme perhaps, occurred in the 
ancient states. 

Hereupon arose therefore, as a political force, the pro- 
test against inequality, and the consideration of an im- 



64 A]^CIEI^T STATES. 

portant inquiry as to who were the people; whether "the 
people" in the political sense were all the hnman creatures 
of the community, or this or that division of the aggregate 
humanity subject to the state — a consideration upon which 
followed the use and the ever-changing signification of the 
word ' ' aristocracy. ' ' 

By variations which give one or another of the subordi- 
nate races accidental importance, the change was favored 
which reduced the dominant race from that attitude in 
which its supremacy could be asserted with the greatest 
vigor ; while if it was an element related to industry or to 
commerce that thus acquired consequence, the mutation 
never stopped at that point but pushed on energetically 
toward democratic conceptions. In the greater number of 
the ancient conflicts of this sort the dominance of the 
oligarchs is only an entering wedge that opens the way for 
the whole people. 

lY. — Under the oligarchs nations make that first great 
advance in the political system which is involved in the 
possession of the written law. With the royal authority in 
vigorous operation there was a complete acquiescence in the 
personal standard, down to the contented acceptance of the 
royal opinion or will as the measure of justice. But acqui- 
escence in the judgments of kings was found practically to 
result in the use of the machinery of the state to oppress all 
classes or persons inimical to the royal authority, or to 
those classes charged with the judicial functions. In our 
own times even the least instructed persons readily dis- 
criminate between acts that may be disagreeable to persons 
in authority, but are not crimes, and acts that such persons 
may justly repress because they are forbidden by the laws ; 
and one of the least doubtful cases of abuse of power arises 
when those charged with the administration of the laws 



THE OLIGAECHY. 65 

punisli as crimes acts that are offensive to tliem but inno- 
cent in the eye of tlie law. In the primitive times this 
distinction was not made, and society was not even in 
possession of the ideas upon which this distinction is based, 
for it contemplates government as an abstraction apart from 
those who govern. But as the people acquired political 
consciousness and general political conceptions, they began 
to see dimly the difference between the will of those in 
authority that was merely personal, and the will they were 
authorized to enforce in the common interest ; and the 
demand arose for the definite separation of these, that the 
people might be subject in their lives to recognized rules, 
of right, and not to the caprice of princes or princes' 
favorites. Written codes were the response to this demand,, 
and it is in this period that they are always found as a mat- 
ter of fact. 

Few points in the history of humanity are clearer than, 
that the codes originate at this stage of the social growth ; , 
and the law of the twelve tables is as to this fact typical 
of all the known digested declarations of the relations to • 
one another of the various parts of the social whole ; but 
if this point had been properly considered, it is possible 
that some famous super- scientific definitions of the nature 
of law might never have been made. As the oligarchs, 
obtain control of the state through a conflict which involves 
the struggle of subordinate elements for recognition in the 
state — for ''rights" and for "justice" — and as this con- 
flict implies and produces a new relation of the parts to one • 
another, a new adjustment of the position in which the^ 
classes or other elements stand — there can be no satisfac- 
tion, no content, and no tranquillity until the declaration 
of these relations is made so common a possession that the 

people cannot — or are induced to believe that they cannot — 
5 



66 AITCIENT STATES. 

again Ibecome tlie victims of tliat sort of chicanery involved 
in the notion that the law is a regal or divine secret, to be 
made known only in sentences against accused persons. 
This is the relation of the codes to the conflict. Codes are 
treaties. Every primitive code is a declaration of what is 
agreed to by the parties to a conflict on all the points of 
moment in the life of the people. It is a record made np 
by mntnal consent of the terms upon which the parties to 
the conflict agree to discontinue their hostilities ; and from 
the laws of the twelve tables to Magna Charta codes have 
substantially the same character— that is, they do not deal 
with problems that in modern times are the subject of the 
constitutional law, but with the application of the force of 
society to individual offences which is the subject of the 
modern criminal law, and with disputes between persons 
that are the subject of civil suits in our times ; but they, 
nevertheless, were the determination of disputes between 
hostile classes, which is the real ground of constitutional 
differences; and that they are different in character from 
modern constitutional instruments is due to the fact that 
the subjects upon which the sections of society disputed in 
early times were social, not political. 

If the acquired or lost equilibrium of the social elements 
has modified the social condition, and if this modification 
has changed in any degree the form or frame of the society, 
by a change in the level of classes, or by any other fact or 
.series of facts; then this change in relations for the better 
or worse is formulated with the general consent in certain 
declarations if the change is expressly or purposely made ; 
■ or if the change is by easy and scarcely perceptible grada- 
tions, it slips into the general recognition as usage. Decla- 
rations thus made are called the written law ; usages that 
take rise in this way are the common law or customary law. 



THE OLIGAECHY. 67 

In any nation the actual state of the law represents the 
state of the conflict between the opposed classes. It is the 
gcore— the record of the game. It indicates the movement 
of the strife for supremacy ; the relative gains and losses of 
the sides ; the play — the oscillation of the classes ; the rise 
and fall of one or another in the scale in different emer- 
gencies ; the facts of the nation's life; and the principles 
that the facts are believed to involve. Bnt to declare 
principles calls for the interpretation of results, and often 
there are errors in that interpretation ; and errors thus 
made are one source of the discrepancy between a people's 
life and its laws, its so-called inconsistency. And as the law 
in force at any fixed period indicates the relative exaltation 
or depression of one or another element of the nation at that 
period, so the history of the law will show the course by 
which the nation reached the place it holds, the process of 
the struggle ; what points were dealt with by the way, and 
what ground at various times has been gained and lost for 
liberty. 

All this the law will show, because every conflict, by 
whomsoever won, leads to the enactment of a law which 
declares the result ; and the subject of that law was the 
cause of that conflict, and the issue of the conflict was for 
or against the institution the establishment or destruction 
of which is declared by tliat law. Wars between different 
nations are generally concluded with the maldng of treaties 
of peace, in which are laid down the conditions of future 
relations between the nations ; and the various sections or 
classes of one people act toward each other, in this regard, 
precisely like different nations: the law that defines the 
settlement of some great dispute is their treaty of peace. 
Although this character of law is most obvious in laws that 
are politically fundamental, that is to say, constitutional, 



63 AKCIEISTT STATES. 

yet this description practically covers all laws, for aU are 
settlements of disputed points of right, pul)lic right or pri- 
vate right ; and even those that seem least concerned with 
subjects of party or class dispute, must only be referred to 
a time when topics as to which all, or far the greater num- 
ber, are now of one mind, were as much in issue between 
parties as are now the great points of political difference. 

Y. —Oligarchies were often called republics, either be- 
cause the forces opposed to the central authority used the 
word freedom as a war cry, and were conveniently in- 
different to that fact in the formation of a new system, or 
because this name was given a great deal later, when the 
oppression of many which had succeeded the oppression 
of one had been softened by successive conflicts, and the 
first dismantling of the personal rule was accepted as the 
initial point of the growth of a free state. Regal power at 
first only changes hands, and there is merely a plurality of 
monarchs who are interchangeable and succeed one an- 
other. In the history of Athens the kingly government 
was displaced less abruptly than in most ancient states. 
In the initiation of the changes the hereditary right of 
succession was taken away, but the supreme office was a 
privilege of the royal family, and the chosen member 
retained office for life with the title of Archon. Subse- 
quently his tenure was reduced to ten years, and he gave 
an account of his administration to the aristocracy. It was 
three hundred years from the death of Codrus before the 
oligarchs possessed the state ; and then the tenure of the 
Archons was reduced to one year, and the number increased 
to nine. One of these was a supreme judge, another a high 
priest, and a third commander of the forces, while the other 
six constituted a legislative council. Their oppression 
made a social strife and a demand for written law, which 



THE OLIGAECHY. 69 

resulted in the code of Draco. But liere it is seen that the 
accession of the oligarchs is made effective "by the dissec- 
tion of the sovereign office and the distribution of its 
various functions. In Rome, where, however, the people 
participated in the conflict, and where, in the phrase of all 
the histories, a republic was established upon the expulsion 
of the king, the consuls simply occupied the royal office by 
turns ; but they were monarchs with defined authority ; and 
the oligarchic state, for this very reason, tends always to 
the restoration of the primitive sovereignty in proportion to 
the success with which it resists the effort of the people to 
share the fruits of its successful conflict. Darius, who with 
other magnates overthrew the Persian sovereign, ascended 
the tlirone by compact with his fellows in revolt — a compact 
so full and definite that it might be called a constitution. 
There was therefore some progress, in the fact that his 
power was assumed to be based upon the right of his 
supporters to limit it ; otherwise that revolution might be 
regarded as a mere substitution of one sovereign for an- 
other, without change of political character in the state. 
Between an oligarchy, and the rudimentary attempt to 
organize an administrative monarchy that so often follows 
it, the line must be very nicely drawn ; for in a government 
of nobles to say just where some greater noble ceases to be 
dependent on the will of the others, and rules despite that 
will ; to say just where one oligarch becomes so much 
greater than the rest, that he who appeared but now to be 
the bearer of a delegated sovereignty — an executive author- 
ity — is suddenly seen to be a sovereign in his own right, 
this is far from easy ; and if it were easy, there would 
probably have been fewer monarchies immediately suc- 
ceeding oligarchies ; that is, fewer oligarchies ending where 
they began. 



70 ANCIENT STATES. 

In all the ancient oligarchies there were, therefore, two 
ways in which mainly authority was organized and admin- 
istered ; either the oligarchs extended the tendency already 
in operation for the dissection of the sovereignty, and thus 
distributed the various functions of royalty, so that twenty 
or fifty leaders of the revolt held each some fractional 
portion of the regal power ; or they provided for a rotation 
of rulers when each was absolute, was in fact a copy of the 
king and held authority for a day or a year, and then gave 
place to another, and so through the whole number. Such 
a history as that of Darius is so uncommon as to put its 

details in doubt. 

YI. -Every establishment of an oligarchy upon the 
overthrow of a throne has various possible results. Its 
legitimate and what may be called its natural issue is its 
extinction in a democracy. An oligarchy in which the dis- 
tribution of the sovereignty is effected successfully, and in 
which the endeavor of the executive to increase and person- 
alize his office is defeated, maintains its importance in the 
ceaseless conflict for supremacy by the admission to its 
privileges of classes that were formerly excluded, and thus 
enlarges the area of political vitality in the state tiU the 
oligarchic elements proper are lost by dilution, and the 
state fades into a democracy. An event of this sort may 
coincide with the existence on an ornamental throne of a 
puppet prince, whose authority is found to be unreal only 
when he endeavors to exercise it. Princes of that sort are 
the harlequins of history whose swords are found to be of 
lath only when the wearers are foolishly inspired to di^aw 
them. For an oligarchy to end in democracy is the univer- 
sal consequence of its uninterrupted progression. Toward 
that result the state moves by its growth, and all other 
results are arrests of growth— the subterfuges of class 



THE OLIGAECHY. 71 

interests and personal ambitions. But an oligarchy as a 
*' final" form is therefore not possible. It is extinguished 
in one direction by its failure ; in another direction by its 
success; or if it is exhibited anywhere as a historic 
finality this can only happen in virtue of the fact that it 
destroys the vitality of the nation in the endeavor to retain 
its own supremacy, and the chronicle of its achievements 
blazes over the ruin it has produced. 

But other results are common enough. One is the end 
by distinct reaction, when the revolution fails, and the 
sovereign himself, in his turn, recovers and re-establishes 
the throne. Another result, more common, is by reaction 
that is less clearly apparent, when one of the oligarchs at- 
tains a pre-eminence that the society regards as official only, 
though he makes it personal and thus acquires a qualified 
sovereignty. His pre-eminence is accepted by the society 
at large as an advantage, because it is disgusted with the 
bad government of the oligarchy, and the qualifications are 
developed. This becomes an anticipation of the adminis- 
trative system, which is fully developed only in modern 
times, and which was not realized by the ancient world 
because society was not then in possession of those political 
generalizations, without a clear conception of which tliis 
form cannot be operated efiectively. Consequently the 
limitations fail and this sovereign becomes a tyrant. 

YII.— No oligarchy stands out more conspicuously in 
ancient times as the great force in the life of a people than 
that established by the priesthood in the history of the 
Jews ; and a glance at that story will show how an oligarchy 
—absorbing the national vigor, and persisting by its vital 
tenacity beyond the circumstances appropriate to its action 
—cripples a people, and ensures their destruction by mak- 
ing them unable to meet the emergencies of their destiny. 



72 AI^CIEiq'T STATES. 

Nominally the government of the Jews was a theocracy, 
but the will of God was always ascertained and declared by 
the hereditary priesthood, or by prophets, or by the elders, 
and it never disregarded the interests of the classes most 
associated with the interpretation. Throughout the story 
of this people we see at every step the subordination of all 
to the few through respect for divine behests ; but we must 
remember that the whole chronicle comes to us from the 
priests, while everywhere we may see in their well-framed 
record another history than that they mean to give — a 
history made out by facts that they unconsciously present, 
which indicate the conflict of the general human tendency 
vdth the special tendencies of which the priests make most 
account. 

Some thousands of years since, the Jews were a settled 
people in the country between Libanus and the Mediter- 
ranean. They had entered that country as conquerors, 
having been previously subject to the hero and law-giver 
Moses, and to the military leader Joshua. Their point of 
unity was a moral one. They went to Shiloh to worship, 
for they had a traditional law. Thus, though they were 
one religiously considered, materially they were a scattered 
people, preyed upon and constantly oppressed by stronger 
neighbors, and as a consequence of that ever-present peril, 
falling from time to time under the dominion of local 
leaders, who seem to acquire a temporary sovereignty, and 
of whom the story gives us only incidental and altogether 
unintentional glimpses. 

Their experience and their perceptions of the necessary 
relation between safety and a strength other than that of 
the Lord constantly inclined the people to accept and to 
encourage the tendency to the development of that species 
of rule which always becomes a centre of nationality. They 



THE OLIGAECHY. 73 

wanted a king '4ike all tlie nations;" for they saw that 
those who were governed by kings ruled in the world, and 
they who were subject to priests either passed away or 
lived only on sufferance as servants and slaves. But this 
tendency was constantly controlled and kept down by the 
priests who prevented the growth of a hereditary sovereignty 
by the arts of intrigue, and particularly by the denial that 
any man's achievements were his own. In the view they 
spread of every event, the Lord always conquered by the 
sword of each hero, and heroes individually were thus of 

less account. 

Traditions were cherished of a time when the people 
dwelt to the east of the river Jordan, and ''worshipped 
other gods" than Him whose name was held sacred in 
Israel. In the story of Joshua we get an actual view of the 
irruption of the Jews into the country west of the Jordan, 
and of how they conquered it, capturing and destroying 
the cities, and dividing the land among themselves. All 
the substantial points of that history were treasured tradi- 
tionally for many generations ; and in the later time, when 
an organized nation had grown, and the priesthood was the 
greatest power in the state, the story was written down and 
written in the way best suited to make the most of those 
observances that call for the exercise of priestly functions, 
and to make it appear that Joshua also was subordinate to 
the sacerdotal order. But it is evident that Joshua was an 
absolute mHitary sovereign ; was, in fact, the great leader 
without whom such events never occur, and but for whom 
there could have been no such grouping and gathering the 
people into an effective force as to make that basis of 
national unity upon which the priests subsequently oper- 
ated and which they frittered away. Joshua led the people 
to the invasion of an already settled country, and by 



\ 



74 AKCIENT STATES. 

conquest enabled them to dwell in " a land for wMch they 
did not labor, and cities which they bnilt not," and to eat 
of '' vineyards and olive yards which they did not plant." 
All stories of events presumed to precede the irruption of 
the Jews into the country west of the Jordan are Hebrew 
myths, of exactly the same character, and entitled to the 
same credit as those myths which detail in the stories of 
the Aryan nations the intercourse of gods and heroes. 
Sometimes, perhaps, there was a fact behind the story so 
distorted from the view of later interests as to lose alto- 
gether its original character; oftener there was only an 
imagination. AH the story of Moses and Mount Sinai and 
the wanderings in the desert and the escape from Egypt, 
are embroidered upon a scheme of fact, but distorted to 
give splendor to the national origin, and to the common- 
place narrative of the rise to importance of a few nomads. 

On the death of Joshua ''the elders that overlived 
Joshua" and several inconsiderable chieftains exercised a 
divided authority, and the people were not kept together. 
They served "Baal and Ashtaroth," and ''were delivered 
into the hands of the spoilers," and "could not any longer 
stand before their enemies." By their overthrow of the 
sovereignty the priests had produced this, but they attri- 
bute it to the impiety of the people. Neighboring poten- 
tates subjected the nation ; champions like Othniel and 
Ehud and Shamgar arose from time to time and won a 
temporary release from neighboring powers; and "the 
Lord raised them up judges;" that is, aU that remained 
intact of the early sovereignty was the judicial function, 
and the priests designated who should exercise it. 

Gideon, who overcame the Midianites, was another of 
the occasional leaders who arose. In his case we see clearly 
the common perception of the national want, and the 



THE OLIGAECHY. 75 

conflict against it of the Hagiocrats. For ''the men of 
Israel said unto Gideon, rule thou over us, l3otli tliou and 
thy son, and thy son's son also ; for thou hast delivered us 
from the hands of Midian." No invitation to accept a 
throne and found a dynasty was ever more clearly made ; 
and this was a natural expression of gratitude, and an 
aspiration readily to he comprehended to give permanency, 
for the henefit of the nation, to the relation then temporarily 
held toward it hy this hero and leader. 

But on this occasion, as on so many others, the tend- 
ency was overcome l^y the Hagiocrats. Exactly how does 
not appear, for in chronicles of this nature only results are 
given ; hut in the preservation of the tradition of this con- 
flict through many ages, they preserved the traditional 
form of conclusion, and reported that Gideon answered : 
"I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over 
you ; the Lord shall rule over you." That is to say, you 
shall still he subject to those who present their own will in 
the form of a command from heaven. 

But in this case either the movement revived subse- 
quently and was more successful, or the Hagiocrats had 
only such a nominal control as seemed to justify their 
declaration ; for Gideon exercised an extensive sovereignty, 
and his death left an opportunity for some one of his sons, 
of whom there were seventy. There was a conflict for the 
succession. Abimelech, his son by a concubine, said to 
his mother's relatives, "Speak, I pray you, in tlie ears of 
all the men of Shechem, whether is better either that all the 
sons of Gideon, which are three score and ten persons, 
reign over you, or that one reign over you?" 

Capable men therefore arose in every generation around 
whom the elements of political power might liave crystal- 
lized, but the process was always interrupted by sacerdotal 



76 AITCIENT STATES. 

craft, and the people were made the victims of the priestly 
system ; for the priests prevented the growth of the nation 
in the only form in which a nation could grow at that time. 
The process of the growth of sovereignty lasted hut one 
lifetime. There was a church, but no dynasty. Grideon 
left no kingdom, and the power he had concentrated 
dribbled away at his death ; so did that concentrated by 
Jair, and as disorganization came, and defencelessness in 
its train, every neighboring enemy was a terror. 

Hence, when the Ammonites had invaded and were 
encamped in Gilead, another leader was sorely needed: 
"And the people and princes of Gilead said one to an- 
other, What man is he that will begin to fight against the 
children of Ammon ? He shall be head over all the in- 
habitants of Gilead." 

The man who then arose was Jephthah. He was an 
outlaw ; and they called him in to organize and lead the 
people, and made a compact with him that he should have 
sovereign power if he conquered the enemy. How he did 
it, and how he made a vow, in consequence of which his 
daughter was sacrificed '4o the Lord," is a familiar story, 
commonly received as a record of the ferocious fidelity of 
the race ; but what may readily be seen in it is the con- 
trivance of those whose apprehensions for their supremacy 
were alarmed at the rise of any leader. It was their object 
to destroy Jephthah' s only heir, and so defeat the compact, 
and whether they entrapped him into an oath, and placed 
the daughter where its effect would fall on her ; or whether 
they merely murdered her, and explained her death as a 
sacrifice, they equally prevented any succession to the 
sovereignty, for ''she was his only child; beside her he 
had neither son nor daughter." 

Samson was the next champion, and his story indicates 



THE OLIGAECHY. 77 

the degree in wliicli tlie Jews had fallen under the dominion 
of a neighboring people. After him, it is said, "In those 
days there was no king in Israel ; but every man did that 
which was right in his own eyes." 

In all this the evident facts are the disorganized condi- 
tion of the people, which pnts them at the mercy of better 
provided neighbors, makes them inferior to the very races 
whom they overcame when they themselves were led into 
the country by Joshua ; the tendency of events and condi- 
tions of life to produce that personal sovereignty which 
alone can make national independence possible in such 
conditions ; and the resistance to that tendency by the com- 
bination of the cultured intellect of the race co-operating 
for the same purpose in aU the tribes, and defeating the 
formation of a permanent sovereignty in great degree by 
fostering the evils inseparable from its advantages, giving 
all possible prominence to the offensive side of the royal 

office. 

But the priests, in order to retain such a hold upon the 
people as would enable them to control the tendency that 
resulted from natural inclinations, were led to cultivate the 
moral element of the national character in an excessive 
degree. It was through this element that their influence 
was effective, and they worked to extend its operation and 
to have every fact of existence measured by the moral 
standard. They succeeded so well in this that they fell 
on the other side, and the moral measurement of all things 
was extended finally to a measurement of the priesthood 
itself. In the earlier times the priesthood was pure and 
earnest in its better purposes ; and the standard installed 
into the popular mind at that time remained to the days 
when the priesthood became corrupt ; and the order in its 
time of degradation was judged by what it had taught in 



1^3 ANCIENT STATES. 

its days of purity, and so lost respect and inflnence. But 
the people, apparently, never lost faith in that divine super- 
vision which the priesthood taught. They only lost faith, 
from time to time, in the priests as the mediums of divme 
command, and at such periods they accepted the word from 
heaven by some other messenger. Plenty of voluntary 
messengers arose, and hecame correctives upon the do- 
minion of the priesthood. These voluntary messengers were 
the prophets ; a type that exists in every primitive condi- 
tion, and is exemplified in and extends from Elijah of the 
Jews to the "medicine man" of the American Indians 
This character is always important hecause of its natural 
relation to the popular mind. It results fi'om the resort 
ofthe common mind to a simpler relationship with super- 
human powers, and is a revolt against the machinery and 
chicanery of the temple. Some man, in whom the moral 
nature of the people has accidentally reached an extreme 
development, separates himself from his fellows-from all 
society, goes into the forest like the Indian, or on his pillar 
like St. Simeon Stylites. There he gives himself to medita- 
tion and has visions. In other words he separates the un- 
conscious thought of the people from all the trammels of 
Hfe and its conventionalties, and applies this thought thus 
freed from restraint totlie prohlems of the people's destiny ; 
from aU this results some scheme of action that is com- 
municated as the command of heaven. 

With the Hebrews this kept vital that dependence upon 
a divine will-that government by superstition -which 
would have been outgrown if it depended upon the priest- 
hood ; and it made a separate standard of morahty to which 
the priesthood was brought back from time to time out ot 
corruptions and abuses. It secured the priesthood against 
the ruin that would have resulted from its own vices. 



THE OLIGAECHT. 79 

At tlie time of tlie cliief priest, Eli, the priestly power 
was a mere machinery for plundering the people under the 
pretext of taking their property for sacrifices and for the 
temple ; and the temple, it is pretty plaiDly told, was a 
Ibrothel, and judgment was perverted for l^ribes. Thus the 
people were rohhed, decency was outraged, justice was 
sold, and there was no defence against the puhlic enemy. 
Tlie rule of the strongest was the only law ; and the hocus 
pocus of the temple, the fear of offending the Lord, could 
no longer restrain a people from clamoring against their 
condition. 

The people called for a king ^' to go out l)efore them and 
fight their hattles ;" and this was called Joj the oligarchs, 
^rejecting the Lord." At this time Samuel arose — a wise, 
energetic, far-seeing, and honest man. Had he become 
king and organized the state from the point of royal 
authority, he would have continued the development of the 
nation from that juncture at which Joshua had left it, and 
the Jews would not only have put down all the inimical 
elements in Palestine, hut would have founded there an 
empire greater than any of those that have left their 
grand traces in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. 
But Samuel had grown up in the temple ; he was a 
priest who combined in some degree the character of 
prophet, for he had set aside the legitimate line of priestly 
succession ; and he believed that the country was to be 
saved from the altar, or as we should say now, ' ' within the 
limits of the constitution." He thought the trouble was in 
the bad character of individual priests, and never conceived 
that it was the whole sacerdotal apparatus that was false 
and fatal. Tlierefore he exerted his great genins not in the 
direction of the current of national tendency — not in sym- 
pathy and harmony with the common aspiration, in which 



go AHOIENT STATES. 

direction lay the magnilicent future of tlie race ; but he 
placed himself as a barrier against the current, and though 
he was swept away, this was not before he had so broken' 
its force, so frittered away the vitality of popular impulse 
as to cripple its whole operation, and belittle its ultimate 
effect. Samuel saw that the popular impulse must eventu- 
aUy prevail, and his intention was perhaps to yield an 
apparent obedience to it, and thereby to keep in such rela- 
tions with it that he would be able to control its direction. 
If Saul was chosen by Samuel he was chosen because it 
was believed he would-as he did-accept aU inspiration 
from the temple, and rule in its name ; but it is possible 
there were at this point features in the story of which we 
do not, hear. Samuel may have only made a virtue of 
necessity in assentmg to the elevation of Saul, and the 
legend that he chose him may have been only a later 
endeavor of the priesthood still to appropriate all the 
initiatory effort in the state. 

Except that the state was dwarfed by the too early 
development of the oligarchical power, the progress would 
have been regular enough ; for Saul attained the sovereignty 
on the conditions that always distinguish the rise of the 
administrative monarchy. " Then Samuel told the people 
the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book and 
laid it up before the Lord." In other words, he framed a 
constitution-a written limitation of the royal power in the 
interest of the oligarchs. This is exactly what was done by 
Darius, was done also at Runnymede, and is what is uni- 
versally done at this stage of political progress. 

At this point ends the conflict of the oligarchy against 
the organization of the sovereignty, and here begins that 
battle for supremacy with the organized power which the 
oligarchs hope to control. Ordinarily tlie oligarchical 



THE OLIGAECHY. 81 

power decays from tMs JTincture ; for if there is war the 
monarch becomes supreme as a commander, and if there is 
peace he throws himself upon the people for support 
against the oligarchs, and in the widening circle of the 
nTovement toward democracy thus initiated they are lost. 
But with the Jews it was otherwise "because of the deeper 
hold given the oligarchs by the moral character of the 

nation. 

There were alternations of harmony and discord in the 
performance of the compact between Saul and the Hagio- 
cracy. Saul overcame the enemy whose presence led 
immediately to his elevation, and perhaps alarmed Samuel 
by his success. For an expedition against the Philistines 
Samuel was to offer sacrifice, but did not appear, willing 
perhaps to derange the leader's plans. But Saul offered 
sacrifice himself, and Samuel hastened to come lest the 
expedition should succeed without huu. Samuel said to 
Saul upon this occasion, "l^ovr thy kingdom shall not con- 
tinue ;"— gave him notice in fact of a resolute purpose to 
dethrone him and put another in his place. 

David's appearance on the scene is chronicled in differ- 
ent ways. In one place he is represented as the king's 
favorite ; in another place he is a popular champion, whose 
achievements are so gloried over by the people, that the 
king says, ''What can he have more but the kingdom ? " 
in a'nother place he is pictured as the divinely-chosen suc- 
cessor of Saul, whose obscure life is first invaded by the 
expedition of Samuel to anoint him. AU the atmosphere 
of the story seems to indicate that he was the royal favorite 
whose personal accomplishments and talent for music com- 
mended him to the monarch. He obtained, through this 
favor, a command that was evidently deemed inconsistent 
with his immature years and inexperience, but, as has 
6 



82 ATTCIETTT STATES. 

happened with many anotTier juvenile commander, Ms 
enterprise and genius for war gave incomparably brilliant 
results; and the priesthood, ready to seize every oppor- 
tunity against Saul, assisted with legends of various sorts 
to spread his fame and give his achievements a marvellous 
character. He was thus taken up hy the people, and the 
way in which he filled the popular thought excited the 
apprehension and hostility of the ruler, who perhaps saw 
the priestly manoeuvre behind the popular acclaim. All 
the story of the secret expedition of Samuel to anoint the 
obscure boy was of a piece with the policy so often seen in 
the Hebrew history— an invention contrived later to appro- 
priate to the priesthood the prescience of the choice of the 
sovereign, and the presumed advantages of the initiative in 
every change whose results proved beneficial. 

In the days of Saul personal ^sovereignty obtained its 
first firm foothold with the race, and made subject a certain 
number of the tribes, and this rule was continued to Saul's 
son Ishbosheth. David established his sovereignty over 
other tribes, and eventually consolidated the two sovereign- 
ties and ''ruled over all Israel." He was, in the often- 
repeated phrase, ''a man after God's own heart." That is 
to say, his conduct was satisfactory to the elders and 
priests. He was, in short, a good politician who observed 
closely the terms on which it was possible to retain his 
authority, and treated with due consideration the power 
that was still capable of alienating from him the allegiance 
of the people. 

David overcame the priestly opposition by a submission 
which left it no pretexts to assert a hostile will ; and the 
nation thus became unused to its appearance as a political 
power. Moreover, the Hagiocracy had in Samuel produced 
a genius of transcendent order, and his death left its in- 



THE OLIGAECHY. 83 



terests in the hands of pigmies— men nntrained to great 
transactions, because the genius which is all-sufficient 
dwarfs an other men. Under David therefore genius was on 
the side of the sovereignty. This continued under Solomon, 
and the priestly power is only heard of again when under 
Eehohoam a rebellion disturbs the state. 

Hagiocracy had in the Jewish nation this final effect : 
It retarded and prevented the growth of a strong monarchy 
at the time when with regard to surrounding nations that 
growth was possible ; it supplied in itseK no sufficient sub- 
stitute ; and thus kept the nation in an indefinite and 
uncertain political frame down to the period when Rome 
absorbed aU the nations that were incapable of taking care 
of themselves ; and thus the political development of the 
Jews was cut short. 



CHAPTER lY. 

DEMOCRACY. 

L— Democracies rise Iby the displacement of governments 
organized witliont regard to the interest of the people, and 
they yield to governments which put the people down ; and 
as the transition from one to the other of these commonly 
occupies some centuries, it is obvious that there must "be 
very many political conditions included in the term democ- 
racy. Between the order of a democracy which inspu^es 
with its vigorous spirit the forms it has found in existence, 
and that decrepit tyranny of wild impulses in which the 
forms themselves have been swept away as oppressions, 
there is a wide difference ; and they have in common only 
the theory, which is never in accordance with fact, that the 
will of the people is the supreme power in the state. Ages 
"before the occurrence of the later events in the history of 
democracy the oligarchic spmt has been overwhelmed ; but 
at what precise stage of change it may be said that the 
oligarchy has become a democracy is scarcely to be indi- 
cated by any general rule ; for capable oligarchs will really 
govern centuries after the numbers of the people, the forms 
of the government, and the words of the law are against 
them ; while where the commonalty are the intellectually 
superior order, the democratic spirit prevails centuries ere 
the oligarchic institutions have given way. But the nature 
of the movement by which the democracy is induced, and 
by the persistence of which it perishes, is always the same. 



DEMOCEACY. 85 



TMs movement is initiated wMle tlie oligarchy is stiU 
disputing for existence with the earlier power ; for the man, 
or the family, or the tribe interested in the monarchy hy 
the destruction of which the oligarchy arises, never accepts 
the result patiently. Endeavors to re-establish the mon- 
archy are made on the one hand and opposed on the other ; 
and as the oligarchs have thus to struggle to maintain their 
acts against a force which contemplates these acts as crimes, 
they Jrnve also to resist efforts from a source which assumes 
the justice and right of their principle of action, but de- 
mands its application in a larger degree. This demand is 
practicaHy for a participation in the advantages of the 
change ; a participation the limits of which the oligarchs 
strive to restrict, and which other classes endeavor to ex- 
tend in their own favor. 

Conflict foUows, therefore ; a conflict in which the people 
are the assailing force, and to which the whole excluded 
portion of the people sooner or later raUies. Thus, ere the 
oligarchy is fairly in power, the struggle is begun which is 
to end in its downfall, and determine the next change. The 
people claim a share in the alleviation of burdens and 
extension of privileges as the reward of their consent or 
active assistance in the revolution. Or they base their de- 
mand on their importance in the state ; or on the fact that 
without their aid the expeUed sovereign cannot be success- 
fully resisted, or some common enemy effectively opposed. 
Oligarchies that rigidly and successfully maintain their 
resistance to this movement end in reaction; for their 
struggle is like that of a man on the steep slope of a moun- 
tain who must go down or up, since there is no sure 
foothold save in the valley below or on the table-land at 
the top. Either the expelled sovereign makes terms with 
discontented classes of the people, and re-establishes his 



86 ANCIENT STATES. 

throne 'by their aid and connivance, or the oligarchs them- 
selves choose the re-establishment of the throne— perhaps 
with a change of rulers— as the least of two impending 
evils, and the revolution fails for the time, only to "be 
renewed in another generation. 

But the other result is the more common. The oligarchs 
yield either through a sentiment of justice or a perception 
of necessity, and the political hasis of the state is enlarged 
in the democratic sense. Then begin concessions which 
train into an illimitable series. First the classes near to 
the oligarchy are admitted to the more obviously important 
^' rights ;" then the classes next to these assail the discrim- 
ination which shuts them out, and some day are admitted 
also ; and thus the case proceeds, the limits ever enlarging, 
until at last the slaves themselves are recognized as vital 
elements of the state— equal atoms of the political exist- 
ence. 

It is first an advance in echelon of the groups of the 
people or classes ; but when the whole population has thus 
forced its way within the pale of the constitution, is recog- 
. nized as part of the political quantity— it becomes a demand 
for successive privileges denied by the law. The acquisition 
of one privilege becomes the starting-point for the conquest 
of another. There is no finality for the assault on the ex- 
clusive rights of the few, unless it be their total disappear- 
ance ; and no finality in the demand of the people for more 
freedom from restraint, except the total disappearance of 
government. 

II.— Nearly all the important events in the internal 
history of Rome relate to this conflict of the common 
people. Thus the secession of the people to the Mount 
Aventine secured the two plebeian tribunes, which con- 
stituted a surrender to the people by the patricians of a 



DEMOCEACY. 87 

portion of the executive function hitherto exclusively pos- 
sessed and controlled by the aristocracy. By this revolu- 
tion also all existing debts were cancelled, which was the 
establishment" in the state of an equilibrium where an 
inequality had been greatly to the prejudice of the people. 
Although the consuls were only chosen from the privileged 
order, and were, with rare exceptions, animated solely by 
the spirit of the aristocracy, yet the people had a share in 
the choice before the year 270, when the upper classes 
assumed this function exclusively. Thereupon the common 
people refused to serve as soldiers, and were protected in 
this course by the Tribunes. But the consuls made the 
levies outside the city— for the jurisdiction of the Tribunes 
was strictly coniined to the city, and they could not protect 
those who were beyond its limits— and if any man kept 
within the city to avoid the authority of the consuls they 
laid waste his lands. Thus in the conflict for political 
power and privilege, the various devices of the Roman 
constitution were imagined and applied as remedies against 
the abuses and oppressions which the people sought to 
escape— or as measures in support of the authority which 
the nobles endeavored to impose. But the people were 
under a great disability in regard to the possession of land. 
In ancient states there was a general recognition of the 
validity of the principle for which some political philoso- 
phers raise their voices in these days— that the land was 
the property of the nation, and that the right to possess it 
in a proper proportion was in the people. In Rome, how- 
ever, the power of the aristocracy had established that for 
this purpose the patricians were the people ; and they held 
out resolutely against a protracted assault of the plebeians 
at this critical and important point. By the consul Spurius 
Cassius an equitable law was made, but he was killed 



88 ATTCIENT STATES. 

for it — murdered Iby a perversion of fhe machinery of 
justice, and tlie law remained a dead letter. From that 
time the demand for the execution of that law became a 
dividing issue "between the classes, until experience had 
demonstrated to the commons that with all they had 
hitherto gained, their power in the state was yet utterly 
inadequate to secure them justice where the prejudice and 
interest of the patricians were arrayed against them ; and 
then the issue became definitely for larger powers, for a 
complete revision of the constitution and the laws in their 
favor. The first fruit of this movement was the government 
of the Decemvirs, which displaced all other authority. 
This commission made the law of the twelve tables the 
corner-stone of the freedom of the people ; but it abused its 
power, and led to a popular revolution by the success of 
which the people acquired a recognition in the law of 
absolute equality. But they were not in fact equal to the 
other classes, and the law was premature in its declarations, 
and led to reaction ; and the people lost in the administra- 
tion the advantage they had gained when, with arms in 
their hands, they had exacted the laws they desired. Thus 
step by step, from revolution to revolution, the common 
people of Rome secured their enfranchisement from a 
dominant oligarchy, until by the passage of the Ogulnian 
law, in the middle of the fifth century, no position in the 
state was closed to a plebeian — the line of political distinc- 
tion was obliterated. 

III.— It is the essential character of the democratic im- 
pulse, therefore, that it enacts laws for the removal of the 
disqualifications which exclude a certain part of the popu- 
lation from participation in the privileges or obligations of 
citizenship ; and wherever this demand for the removal 
of obstacles begins, the democratic spirit is behind it ; and 



DEMOCEACY. 89 

wherever any institntion or law is clamored against as a 
restraint, that spirit is the active agent. It is plain, how- 
ever, that laws or institutions or customs which are bar- 
riers in any sense, may be such in more than one sense. 
If they restrain those who are on one side they may limit 
the exuberant activity of those who are on the other side. 
In semi-savage communities large spaces are sometimes 
enclosed within high earthen walls, and into these en- 
closures the cattle is driven at night. These are pens to the 
cattle, but they are defences against the wild beasts which 
would prey upon the cattle. If we could conceive these 
domestic animals demanding that the walls should be 
levelled because they are restramts upon their freedom and 
iniquitous discriminations against them as cattle, we should 
see an exact analogue to the position of the people when, 
they demand the repeal of laws which, seen from their side,, 
are only restraints, but seen in a larger view, are barriers, 
of defence at once for them and against them. Slavery 
itself, which is the most extreme disqualification that the 
people ever endure, is in its origin beneficent, and is not a bar-- 
rier against the slaves, but for their defence. By the usage 
of all primitive nations the lives of prisoners taken in battle 
were forfeit. And this was not merely a usage of savage 
tribes. Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian war several 
times deliberately slaughtered whole cities full of people 
captured or surrendered. But the option to slay the 
conquered or to keep them as slaves resulted in the 
frequent and at last common adoption of the less bloody 
alternative. Slavery, therefore, originating thus, always 
appears in primitive history as a humane institution. He 
who, seen from the standpoint of the slaves, is their master, 
is, when seen from the standpoint of the other men of his 
race, their defender ; and slavery is the guarantee of their 



90 Al^CIE^TT STATES. 

lives, and of whatever else may be allowed them. Re- 
move that Ibarrier, and they are restored to the position in 
which they themselves or their fathers stood on the field of 
battle, with no defence between them and the slaughtering 
sword of the conqueror. But the hard condition of slavery 
is usually compared with freedom without reflection that 
the just comparison is with death, and probably death by 
torture. It is evident, therefore, that such a barrier is only 
to be removed in proportion as the circumstances in which 
it arose have passed away, or as conditions produced by 
those circumstances no longer exist ; and this is the general 
principle as to restraints on the people. But it was never 
yet inquired in their interest whether the acquirement of 
the liberty they demand would not involve the removal 
of some security against a danger forgotten only through 
the completeness of the remedy supplied by the disqualifi- 
cation at which they fret ; and it is because this inquiry 
was never made that the liberty of the people has so often 
proved their ruin. Every law which can be regarded from 
the standpoint of the people as shutting them out from the 
exercise of certain rights is in fact a definition — a limit of a 
right they really possess. It is therefore as much their 
defence and guarantee in the possession of that right as 
their exclusion from other rights. Progress toward the 
acquisition of other rights often destroys that limit, and 
they thus lose the guarantee of the law for the rights they 
actually possess in a demand that they shall have the 
privilege to try their strength outside the limit. 

If, as happened with the tribuneship in Home, six 
important offices are at a certain period nominally open to 
all classes, but the aristocracy, through their greater 
strength in the state, secure them all, and two of these 
offices are then given absolutely to the people to be filled 



DEMOCEACY. 91 

"by them without competition with other classes — this is a 
real gain, since they secure two posts where they had none ; 
but the evil, advisers of the people point not to this practical 
possession of two offices, but to the co-ordinate exclusion 
from four others. Urged by the lovers of agitation, they 
secure the admission that all six offices are open to every 
class, and again the aristocracy secure every one ; again 
the people fall to that condition in which they were before 
they acquired the guarantee of the two offices. They lose 
the ground gained in many conflicts in the endeavor to 
overcome an imaginary evil. 

Thus, in the name of a larger liberty, the barriers and 
safeguards to the liberty actually attained are broken 
down. Impatience of restraint, the desire to give free play 
to every impulse strikes blindly at institutions and laws 
till they are destroyed ; and the people find themselves 
nominally supreme in the state only to find that they are 
really left naked to the assaults of their enemies, external 
or internal, which enemies put down their impatience with 
force. 

Demagogues — men who hope to rise to fortune and great 
place in the storm of popular agitations — are the effi^ctive 
force in this impn.lse of the people to false progress. They 
excite the jealousy of the many against the privilege en- 
joyed by some class. Inquiry is never made into the 
equivalent the people received for assent to that privilege. 
But the privilege is abolished, and with it that equivalent 
goes also ; and with the barriers down the sea sweeps in. 

lY. — Jealousy of superior persons, of dominant indi- 
viduals, of men of great talents, is the common disease of 
democracies ; and it affects their destiny in the greatest de- 
gree, either as it expels all men of capacity and leaves the 
state in the hands of pitiful pigmies, and so produces its 



92 A]S-CIE1!^T STATES. 

min in any crisis, or as it perverts the talent of men 
of capacity. These, to avoid exHe, must play the iml)e- 
cile. They must fool the popular impulse, pander to the 
mean whims, and thus a vile purpose is furthered loy the 
talents that should have corrected the action of the popular 
judgment and impulse. 

All the democracies of Greece fell through this great 
negation in their history, that they excluded capaWe men 
from puWic life, or only faUed to exclude them if they were 
cunning knaves. And these states were all the victims in 
the same circumstances, (1) of incapacity where men were 
honest, (2) of dishonesty where men were capable. 

This is the great negation in the history of democracy, 
because democracies can only stand upon the theory that 
in the number of the citizens is always to be found some 
man as capable of governing as the kings were, and that 
the machinery of popular control will surround him with 
assistants as capable as those the king called about him for 
subordinate functions. That if the democracy does not 
produce this result it is an inevitable source of calamity, is 
obvious upon the slightest consideration of the relation of 
the state to other states. 

Every state is under a physical obligation to stand in its 
progress and strength abreast with the other states near it. 
There will never be any such benevolent relation between 
neighboring nations that they may have in the same period 
widely different ideals of exceUence. One cannot treasure 
moral and the other military ideals. K one reduces all its 
citizens to the atoms of a military unity for the sake of 
strength, it may not be said in the other, ^' we prefer the 
equality of the people to military greatness, and we will have 
a democracy and enjoy the ease and advantage of a liberal 
system ;" for this latter state would presently become a de- 



DEMOCEACY. 93 

pendent province of the former, and the people would be 
made to endure by the will of the conqueror that very 
pressure upon individual rights to avoid which they im- 
periled their independence. 

For this plain reason democracy is only admissible in 
any state with neighbors on the rational claim that it places 
in its government at least as great capacity as other forms. 
In fact it is a democratic theory that incapacity in govern- 
ment is a great weakness of monarchies ; that because the 
monarchy chooses its ruler only from the small circle of a 
single family, or accepts in the person of a hereditary 
prince one designated without regard to capacity, it is 
therefore less likely to be capably governed than the form 
which, drawing from the whole population, has always 
superior qualities at command. Yet this chosen ground of 
democratic theory was the point at which the ancient 
democracies failed through popular jealousy and fear of the 
talent that made itself manifest. 

Hostility to every form of superiority ,was an inherent 
quality of the democratic movement ; and it was therefore 
within the natural sequence of impulses that antipathy 
should be excited by the possession of any dominant attri- 
bute ; for when men had secured an equal enjoyment with 
their fellows in every possession that the law could reach, 
and found that a ground of personal superiority still existed, 
they hated this inequality only the more for the fact that it was 
one that law in its ordinary operation could not overcome ; 
and they applied the law specifically to the cure by ordain- 
ing the expulsion of the man in whose presence they were 
humiliated with the sense of their inferiority. In the name 
of equality they legislated inequality. 

Y. — But the immediate source of the laws of ostracism 
and petalism was nominally the apprehension of the 



94 ANCIENT STATES. 

tyranny. The people exiled great men lest they shonld 
seize supreme authority. Tyranny was established in so 
many Grecian cities, was so commonly a result of the con- 
flict of the democracy with the oligarchy, that it was natural 
the democracy should always he apprehensive with regard 
to it ; and inasmuch as the tyrants commonly gained an 
insidious popularity in the cause of the people, it was not 
altogether unnatural that it should be accepted as a general 
principle that the tyrant was commonly a capable man of 
the popular party. He was, in fact, no more such than the 
wolf in the shepherd' s coat was a shepherd ; but the sheep 
were imposed upon by appearances. Grecian fable points 
out the possible extent of such imposition by the implica- 
tion that an eloquent wolf could induce the sheep to send 
the dogs into exile ; and the law of ostracism was just such 
an act on the part of the sheep. But the constant possibility 
of the tyranny was a rational ground of the fear of su- 
periority, though an unworthy apprehension was what 
commonly mspired the application of the law of ostracism 

or petalism. 

For, in fact, these laws, like all other laws ever made, 
were perverted in their operation. They became instru- 
ments of importance mainly used to drive out the men who 
might defeat the machinations of the demagogues ; and the 
men who paved the way for tyrants, found no tool so 
effective as the law intended to prevent the erection of 
tyrannies— the law which enabled them to expel any citizen 
whose sagacity, eloquence or courage, could penetrate their 
designs, make them clear to the people, or who could op- 
pose them in battle. 

Thus, with democracy actually standing upon the theory 
that it is the most fruitful source of capacity in govern- 
ment, it is exhibited in the history of all the ancient states 



de:«:oceacy. 95 

in Greece that democracy no sooner discovers a man to Ibe 
possessed of great abilities, no sooner learns of his superi- 
ority to the crowd of men, than it is led by the nose, to ex- 
clude him from the career of public life, even if it does not 
drive him into exHe ; except always in the case when he 
applies his talent dishonestly, and cringes and fawns to the 
many in the pursuit of official dignity. Indeed, the law of 
ostracism might well have been called a law for producing 
demagogues, and opening the way for tyrants. 

Great men in Greece went maundering moonshine in the 
schools of philosophy ; and instead of the advantage that 
might have accrued to the state if the inexhaustible in- 
genuity of the nation had dealt with politics in its practical 
aspects, the intellectual activity was wasted in the futile 
pursuit of vapory fancies and interminable dialogues on 
abstractions. As the capable thinkers, excluded from 
public life, were neutralized in philosophy, so the military 
talent of the nation, that might have made the later his- 
tory more splendid than the earlier, was lost in the 
mercenary bands that served foreign states and barbarian 
princes. 

Men who could have saved Athens in the various phases 
of the Peloponnesian war were excluded from the sphere 
of service by the jealousies of the democratic spirit ; and 
the state whose armies were commanded by cobblers, and 
whose domestic government was in the hands of tinkers and 
peddlers, fell a prey to its enemies and a victim to its mean 
and pitiful fears; in which it appeared inspired by the 
spirit of the rabble, incapable of conceiving the generous 
impulses that keep pure the nobler natures. Every person 
capable of generous sympathies is reconciled with the fate 
of Greece when he reads the histories of Pericles, Themis- 
tocles, Miltiades, even Alcibiades. An unclean horde of 



96 A]S"CIENT STATES. 

clamoring wretclies finds its proper place in tlie world 
when it is put under the foot of the stronger races. 

VI.— But there were intervals when the people rose to a 
comprehension of great spirits. This is exhibited in part 
of the career of Pericles. It is, as we have noted, not in 
any respect in forms that the tyranny consists, for the re- 
lation of personal supremacy was as sharply defined in the 
kingly state. Nor was the distinction in that fact by which 
the tyrants most commonly difi'ered from the kings, that 
there was no hereditary descent. It was in the spirit of his 
relation by which his office was held in defiance of ancient 
usage and law, and equally in defiance of the present 
known will of the nation. In the case of Pericles the facts 
are those of monarchy, for there is a common equality of 
all under the du^ection and control of one ; but since his 
position as the head of the state did not come by hereditary 
right, he was assimilated to the tyrant. He possessed the 
leading attributes of each of these, yet no one ever called 
Pericles either king or tyrant ; for the mood was not that 
of the mere ruler of a subject people. The intention was 
not so much to rule as to serve, and this intellectual ele- 
ment preserves the strictly political character of the rela- 
tion. Pericles is recognized as a good which in some 
aspects assumes the appearance of a certain evil, but as 
the necessary protection of the state from that evil. 

But this intellectual relation of the people to their great 
men only persists while a crisis, an imminent danger, a 
period of great excitement, lifts the nation up to a patriotic 
fervor, merges all individual thoughts, and selfishness— 
which is the source of mean ideas— into one great common 
impulse which establishes the psychological relation be- 
tween a great soul and the souUess many ; for as soon as 
this period passes grovelling humanity asserts itseK again ; 



DEMOCEACY. 97 

rivals and opponents, lately silent, appeal to it, direct the 
attention to those aspects of the great man's relation which 
suggest the tyranny, hint a suspicion of his purposes, and 
he is ruthlessly thrust aside, degraded, slain, or exiled. 

yil. — How widely removed is the just theory of democ- 
racy from the condition of a democratic state may be seen 
in two pictures of Thucydides. Here is the first in an oration 
of Pericles: ^'For we enjoy a form of government which 
does not copy the laws of our neighbors ; but we are our- 
selves rather a pattern to others than imitators of them. In 
name— from its not being administered for the benefit of the- 
few, but of the many — it is called a democracy ; but with 
regard to its laws, all enjoy equality as concerns their- 
private difierences ; while with regard to public rank, ac- 
cording as each man has reputation for anything, he is- 
preferred for public honors, not so much from consideration 
of party as of merit ; nor again on the ground of poverty, 
while he is able to do the state any good service, is he- 
prevented by the obscurity of his position. We are liberal, , 
then, in our public administration ; and with regard to > 
mutual jealousy of our daily pursuits, we are not angry 
with our neighbor if he does anything to please himself ; ; 
nor wear on our countenance ofibusive looks which, though 
harmless, are unpleasant. While, however, in private mat- 
ters we live together agreeably, in public matters, under the 
influence of fear, we most carefully abstain from transgres- 
sion, through our obedience to those who are from time to^ 
time in office, and to the laws ; especially such of them as 
are enacted for the benefit of the injured, and such as, 
though unwritten, bring acknowledged disgrace on all who 
violate them." 

This is the picture drawn of the state by a popular 

orator, on a great patriotic festival when none of its features; 

7 



98 AI^CIEI^T STATES. 

were likely to be stated to tlie disadvantage of tlie city. 
Contrast now the picture of the spirit of a democratic people 
when their passions are excited by nnsnccessful war, as 
drawn by Thucydides : 

" The ordinary meaning of words was changed by them 
as they thought proper. For reckless daring was regarded 
as courage that is true to its friends ; prudent delays, as 
specious cowardice ; moderation as a cloak for unmanli- 
ness ; being intelligent in everything as being useful for 
nothing ; frantic violence deemed part of the manly charac- 
ter; cautious plotting was deemed only a specious cover 
for retreat. The advocate of cruel measures was always 
trusted, while his opponent was suspected of a kindly dis- 
position toward the foe. He that plotted against another 
was, if successful, reckoned clever ; he that suspected a plot 
still cleverer ; but he that forecasted for escaping the neces- 
sity of all such things, was regarded as one who broke up 
his party and was afraid of his adversaries. In a word, the 
man was commended who anticipated one going to do an 
evil deed, or who persuaded it to one who had no thought 
of it. Moreover, kindred became a tie less close than party, 
because the latter was more ready for unscrupulous auda- 
city. For such associations have no relation to the benefits 
of established laws, but are formed in opposition to those 
institutions by a spirit of rapacity. Again their mutual 
grounds of confidence they confirmed, not so much by any 
reference to the divine law as by fellowship in some act of 
lawlessness. The fair professions of their adversaries they 
received with a cautious eye to their actions, if they were 
stronger than themselves, and not with a spirit of generosity. 
To be avenged on another was deemed of greater conse- 
quence than to escape being first injured one's self. As for 
oaths, if in any case exchanged with a view to reconcilia- 



DEMOCEACY. 99 

tion, "being taken Iby eitlier party with regard to their im- 
mediate necessity they only held good so long as they had 
no resources from any other quarter ; but he that first, 
when occasion offered, took courage to "break them, if he 
saw his enemy off his guard, wreaked his vengeance on him 
with greater pleasui'e for his confidence, than he would 
have done in an open manner ; taking into account hoth the 
safety of the plan, and the fact that hy taking a treacherous 
advantage of him, he also won a prize for cleverness." 

This picture has "been vividly realized once in our own 
time, namely in that democratic orgy— the government of 
the Paris Commune in 1871. There also was seen the fact 
peculiar to the democratic spirit that its passion does not 
recognize the limit of politics ; for the true aim of politics is 
to secure by party or otherwise the better government of 
our country, but the extreme democracy openly prefers the 
ruin of the country to the triumph of an opposition party 
within the line of national safety. 

yill. — All the operation of the ancient democracies is 
seen m a narrow sphere, because the history of every 
ancient democracy is the history of one city. Rome is not 
an exception, for democracy there was metropolitan ; to all 
other parts of the empire Rome herself stood in the relation 
of a sovereign. Because of this narrowness of the scene 
the conflict of classes is the more intense and remorseless. 
It is a battle in a cock-pit. It is as if there were not room 
in the world for opposing principles ; and in fact there is 
not, for the city is the world. 

Democracies differ from other governments in the ancient 
world by the same mental and moral characteristics as 
other people differ from city people. There is the restless 
activity of the city, and its variety of impressions which 
foster an inconstancy of temper, and make sameness i)ain- 



100 AITOIENT STATES. 

ful and oppressive. There is the constant personal contact 
and interchange of ideas which make all knowledge a com- 
mon possession— the people equally intelligent on a higher 
or lower scale as the case may be, and produce that sense 
of common humanity which makes the aspiration for 
equality as imperative to the mind as are the pangs of 
hunger to the body. 

Kural populations living in constant observation and 
experience of the order of nature seem not to attain that 
train of ideas which impels men to reject systems of the 
subordination of persons. The conception of equality and 
the jealousy of superiority were in the ancient world pro- 
duced in cities ; and this relation of the staple of democratic 
fabrics to life in cities was recognized politically, for Pisis- 
tratus and his sons pursued as a policy the endeavor to 
transplant the citizens of Athens to small farms. 

IX.— In the full-blown democracy, therefore, appears in 
its amplest development that battle for equality which 
eventually perverts the political endeavor to a false issue, 
and in which the people appear beating the air with passion 
and frenzy in their endeavors to grasp a barren ideality, 
while their clearer-headed opponents industriously occupy 
the real strategic ground of the conflict ; for the natural and 
just movement of the democratic energy is toward the 
legitimate alleviations of the pressure of authority ; but the 
people, deluded with the fancy that the inequalities they 
perceive— whether political, social, economical, or natural 
—are the strongholds of this pressure, labor blindly for the 
reduction of these, and thus lead to the consolidation and 
increase of the pressure. 

In the account given of the oligarchies we have seen the 
relation of the origin of this battle for equality, as arising 
in the existence of subordinate classes ; but it may be re- 



de:moceact. 101 

peated here that the appearance of the classes in the law is 
in a very great degree in the interest of the weaker ones, 
for the stronger have no need of the protection of the law ; 
hnt at some time in the national history, when the feehler 
classes hecome for the moment the stronger, they exact and 
record a law which remains as their protection when their 
temporary dominancy has passed away, and they have 
fallen again into their original subjection. All the clamor, 
therefore, for the obliteration of classes in the law and class 
legislation, which is raised by the demagogues presumably 
from philanthropic motives and in the interest of justice, 
results in the destruction of barriers that were not so much 
erected against these feebler orders as for their protection 

against others. 

With the distinction of privileged and unprivileged once 
made, all below the limit note it, and the endeavor of life 
thenceforth on the part of each class successively is to get 
inside that line down to which the favors of the law extend, 
or to extend the line of the law to take in one group and 
then another; and as the political basis is widened to 
democracy, for the absolute equality of all before the law 
as it exists; and eventually for the utmost conceivable 
absence of law which comes to be regarded as a tyrannous 
interference with personal impulses. 

In one period of human history, therefore, and under 
all the operation of the customary laws, men are equal in 
the proportion in which they are not free. Freedom is the 
source of inequality. Individual freedom— personal libei-ty 
—began with the exemption of cei-tain men or families 
from the pressure of a part of the law. Freedom, as an 
idea of the relation of men to one another in their own 
country and to government, was at first merely the right to 
establish an inequality in your own favor. Equality and 



102 AI^^CIENT STATES. 

freedom were, therefore, inconsistent facts in their first re- 
lation. 

Equality was enforced by an equal pressure of authority 
on the whole surface of life ; on impulses that are now re- 
garded as innocent even more than on those that are now 
regarded as criminal ; for the freedom to kill one' s neigh- 
bor was greater than that as to acts now esteemed unim- 
portant. It requires but little reflection to see that this 
severe pressure of the early customary law was not a sense- 
less tyranny, but a provision for safety. In primitive states 
each must be assimilated to the whole from the demand 
of a natural instinct. Even with animals difference is treated 
as a danger, and no distinction is made between an enemy 
and a friend varied from the common type. But there was 
more than this. There was the immediate necessity of sub- 
ordination for war ; and variations that might weaken the 
line of battle might thus lose the field, and with it the 
existence of the whole tribe or nation. To infiict, on a 
tendency with such possible results behind it, the penalty 
of death was therefore not cruel or savage, but a wise 
provision for the economy of life. And this was the basis 
of all the apparently savage inflictions of that law. It was 
necessary to secure in the whole people such a uniformity 
as is now necessary in armies ; and the fact that modern 
societies keep apart a certain armed portion of the people 
makes it possible to relieve the rest in this particular. But 
this pressure taken away, inequality immediately arises. 
He who has more intelligence and equal vigor will get 
better crops from the same soil and better draughts from 
the same river than the man who has less, for he will con- 
trive new implements and choose his time with a happier 
perception of seasons and tides ; and thus the freedom to 
exercise his faculties will necessarily induce the inequalities 



DEMOCEACY. 



103 



of wealth and personal importance. But the laws of 
ancient communities prevented sucli results by specific pro- 
visions against new implements and against departures 
from agriraltural or other usage. It was the common 
legend of the ancient world in regard to crafts and imple- 
ments alike that each was the gift of some di^dnity, and 
hence to make changes was esteemed an impious challenge 
of divine wisdom. Prometheus paid the penalty of grasp- 
ing at more than the gods gave. In some savage tribes it 
is°still a capital offence for any man to harvest his corn tiU 
the order that he ma^ do so issues from the chief ; and even 
in France authority designates the day when the people 
may gather their grapes. It was assumed that change from 
what was established would be deterioration, and the law 
proposed to preserve the progress already made without 
conception that there was a further possible progress which 
its action would prevent. 

Progress is consequent upon freedom, and inequality is 
a condition of progress ; for the best men advance the 
standard in all the activities of life, and the struggle of aU 
the others to get abreast with them is what moves forward 
the line of general intelligence and endeavor. 

How wide becomes the departure of democratic theory 
from truth is exhibited tberefore in the fact that liberty, 
which was formerly— and is still— a release from obligations 
by which alone equality can be maintained, which means a 
solution of the general bondage, and is a word of distinct 
opposition to equality, is held in the democratic propaganda 
to import such a relationship with equality that the two facts 
cannot exist apart. But few things, however, are plainer 
than that liberty is the necessary source of inequality ; 
and that equality can only be secured and maintained by a 
tyranny whose first law is the denial of individual freedom. 



104 AlSrCIElS^T STATES. 

AltliongTi, tlierefore, this dead-sea apple of aspiration 
for equality is to-day so conspicuous in all political con- 
flicts, it is not one of the ideas of the moderns, but is 
one of the most ancient of human fancies. Perhaps 
the earliest presentation of the idea of equality of which 
there is historical evidence is found in the religion of the 
Egyptians. 

From scraps of the Egyptian theology were patched out 
those theories of the creation and the nature of God which, 
stamped with the name of the Jews, have been* current in 
the world as '^revealed religion" for some thousands of 
years ; for the so-called religion of the Jews, the possession 
of which has given them a fame they never deserved, was 
merely a sort of second-hand spiritual wardrobe which they 
carried with them out of Egypt. They sweated the religion 
of the Egyptians, and grew rich in theological conceptions 
by the mere possession of the dust. 

In that ancient Egyptian system all were equal at the 
final judgment-day. This judgment-day was not the in- 
definite hereafter. It was a day that came in the regular 
performance of the burial service. The dead man's body 
was brought before a tribunal which inquired into the acts 
of his life. If his life had been pure the right of burial 
was accorded ; if the contrary, it was denied ; and even the 
monarch himself was excluded from consecrated ground if 
charges against him were proved on that day. From this 
machinery of judgment was borrowed the conception upon 
which the later scriptures of the Jews grafted quite another 
sort of final judgment. 

From the most ancient times, therefore— for this Egyptian 
lore disputes antiquity with the Yedas— comes down to us 
this claim of equality between all human creatures at some 
one point or another in the stages of human existence. 



DEMOCEACT. 105 

Equality did not exist in Egypt. It could neither he 
claimed nor pretended that one man was as good as another 
in any respect whatever. All the facts of Egyptian Hfe 
were against the possibility of such a fancy ; yet the imagi- 
nation of the race lifted itself out of these facts and away 
from their restraint, and found or formed a point before 
which equality could be declared and enforced. 

Perhaps this possession of a point of ideal equality — an 
imagined adjustment by divine authority— contented the 
people for the hard inequalities of actual life, since they 
accepted them for so many ages as facts against which there 
was no ground to protest. But this thought was fertile ; 
and as manMnd in the progress of time relinquished one 
theology after another, saw civilizations, religions and 
nationalities drift away, they always saved this treasure 
from the baggage of the routed gods. It was easier to part 
with the gods themselves than with this portion of their 
possessions. And when at last men were taught that 
religious truths were for the regulation of life for practical 
application, they were most curious as to the application in 
that sense of this particular theory. 

Consequently there has not been an age of the world 
when this theory of the equality of men has not glimmered 
here and there in human history. But how was equality 
to be realized anywhere ? It was an imagination so much 
at variance with all the realities of the relations of men to 
one another that they could not coexist. Egypt, which so 
deeply treasured the conception, admitted that it could not 
apply to men until all the hard facts of human pride and 
passion and the practical needs of great station had been 
laid aside. Death and the embalmer must cool and sweeten 
men first. Equality might be admitted then. 

But there was some progress. Greece got around the 



106 ANCIENT STATES. 

difficulty by a step wMch promised, but did not perform ; 
a truly Gfrecian piece of chicanery, and one wliicb. tlie 
Egyptians themselves might have recognized if their sim- 
plicity of character had not made it an impossible fancy for 
them. Greece admitted, and, as we have seen above, even 
enforced equality. Not, however, equality over the whole 
surface of society, but the equality of all those within the 
respective lines by which ancient society was divided into 
so many zones ; there was an equality of dominant and of 
subject men. But this at least gave the theory an actual 
status in human institutions. 

Nobody, however, has yet proposed a scheme for the 
realization of equality in states which did not involve 
inequality, nor is it possible to imagine such a scheme. 
Essential human attributes stand in the way. It is not in 
nature for a man to conceive the case of another as he con- 
ceives his own case ; we cannot occupy two points of view 
at one and the same time, and, therefore, cannot even 
imagine the absolute equality of our positions. In this 
divergence of view arises dispute, and sooner or later in the 
process of dispute force is implied as the necessary condi- 
tion of government aild order. But the existence and 
operation of this force implies greater strength in one place 
than in another, and consequently assumes inequality as a 
condition of the scheme. Absolute equality would be, in 
' politics, the equivalent of perpetual motion in physics ; no 
initiative, no seat of force, no bearings. 

But the ancient democracies, in the endeavor to apply 
the theory of equality, did not fail at so advanced a point 
as that. They failed much nearer the commencement of 
the conflict. They failed because in practice their scheme 
assumed the lowest life in the state as the national standard, 
and so opened the way for the full operation of the neces- 



DEMOCEACY. 107 

sary antagonism whicli, as we have seen, exists "between 
freedom and equality. 

In tlie many variations of social growth, the best result 
is the production of an intelligent people ; one that is in- 
structed, capable and conscientious ; which recognizes the 
obligation of duty as superior to all others ; and the best 
result of political organization would be to make this 
highest type of humanity the vital fountain of the state, the 
source of its inspiration, the origin of its notions of riglit, its 
laws, its tone, and to commit to the care of this part of the 
nation the administration of government. But the error in 
the application of this widely-perceived truth has been the 
assumption that the possession of certain dogmatic formulae 
was the desirable culture ; and the standard was in the East 
the knowledge of the Koran, and in Europe the profession 
in a certain form of the Christian ; and these standards were 
inimical to real progress. 

And as this production of a cultured and really superior 
class is the best result of social growth and the evidence of 
social vigor ; and as the lodgment of power with such a 
class is the best result in politics, so the contrary is the 
worst and the only hopeless consequence ; for to make war 
upon excellence by the establishment of standards above 
which men can only rise to excite apprehension, and to 
give the government to those whose only distinction is that 
they are worthless, this is to defeat the original purpose of 
human association, which is security of the advantages 
gained, the protection of man from his innate tendencies to 
degradation. 

But this is the result of the extreme pursuit of the de- 
mand for equality. It not only strikes at the abuses which 
inequality has produced in the state, but at the excellencies 
also. It puts the easy name of aristocracy upon all things 



108 AITCIENT STATES. 

that stand in its way, and this insures their destruction ; 
and the chief duty of the patriotic spuit is thought to Ibe to 
keep the government out of the hands of all who can by 
any stretch of fancy be called aristocrats. It becomes a 
distinction thus to be ruled out of public life ; every man 
of talent, or of eminent 'family, or of inherited wealth, 
is excluded, and the government falls into the hands 
of those whom the owners of silver spoons would never 
invite to dinner. There becomes involved in the idea 
of government an impulse of hostility to superior quali- 
ties. 

Ultimately, however, this hostility and the exclusion of 
excellence from power corrupts the fabric and leads to a 
new start ; for the people themselves cease to respect those 
who have no higher motives than their own ; for the people 
will unselfishly give in a great cause, but they will not 
restrict their appetites merely to feed the appetites of an- 
other save by compulsion, and from that compulsion they 
wUl free themselves sooner or later. Moreover the cultured 
class grows and forms itself centres apart from the general 
activity ; and these, by their effect on opinion and morality, 
become eventually the standards by which the acts of 
governments are measured, and by which, therefore, govern- 
ments stand or fall. 

Equality, encouraged as the ultimate political aspira- 
tion, takes the social standard from the lowest order of 
people— from the vilest wretches of every community; 
and all that it cannot debase to that level it excludes from 
public life, if it does not drive it out of the country. 

Coarse pride, brutal arrogance, and imbecile incapacity 
possess the state, therefore, in the advanced development of 
the democracy, and cannot defend what they possess ; and 
all the superior qualities of humanity are in an attitude 



DE^IOCEACY. 109 

of hostility. In the meantime, as equality is acquired only 
at the expense of liberty, the greater is the equality the 
more complete is the loss of liberty, and a tyranny neces- 
sarily succeeds. 

X. — Democracy, therefore, as seen in the ancient world, 
was a source and cause of national greatness up to a certain 
point, beyond which it was an equally certain cause of 
ruin and decay. It produced national greatness because 
one immediate source of such greatness is the advance made 
by the people when liberal laws favor competition and 
development; for this advance is greatest in democracies 
inasmuch as there the laws contemplate such freedom as 
the greatest good and secure it at any cost. But progress 
in this direction is limited in its beneficial effects by an evil 
to which it is subject, which is the co-ordinate production 
of a moral condition of impatience of restraint that renders 
discipline and control intolerable, and corrupts faith and 
confidence to such a degree that united effective action is 
not possible. 

Democracy, in virtue of its theory of the unity of society, 
leads to administrative centralization, which by perversion 
ends in mere personal government ; but in its practical 
operation in the lives of the many it leads toward a condi- 
tion of extreme indulgence for individual impulses as 
opposed to the action of a collective will. Out of this 
grows such an intolerance for the pressure and control of 
authority that its right is disputed at every point, and the 
very existence of government is regarded as a fact inimical 
to the liberties of the people. Any real control, direction, 
restraint, or imposition of penalties becomes impossible be- 
cause their sanction was in the general consent, and that is 
lost ; and if the parts in the machinery of government 
that are related to these ideas still exist, they act, not justly 



110 AISTCIEITT STATES. 

or regularly, but only upon tliose who are removed from 
the popular sympathies by their adhesion to some party or 
cause that is opposed by the many ; or they are perverted 
to be instruments of the vengeance of the party in power, or 
even of the persons who stand in the position of authority. 

Thus in Athens the law for the punishment of a crime 
was inflicted upon the victorious heroes who gained the 
battle of Arginusa, on the pretext that they had not saved 
from drowning the Athenians in the ships wrecked in that 
battle; and the son of Pericles and Aspasia was thus 
murdered by a fiction of law— the fiction in virtue of which 
the spite of virulent enemies is called justice. In the 
modern world the Reign of Terror in France is a familiar 
instance of the operation of this impulse of democracy. 

Justice, therefore, is driven from her function, and her 
weapons are turned against those whom it is her duty to 
protect. Theft fiourishes, murder is venial, outrage of every 
kind is a jest— for the natural impulses are free, and these 
commonly move without regard to established relations, 
the protection of which is the essential purpose of control. 
Government thus either fails altogether and the state 
lapses into anarchy, or it becomes the mask of party or 
personal vengeance. 

All this begins as an indulgence of the people in their 
restiveness under just restraints ; it is the result of pander- 
ing to a morbid intolerance of pressure. In its extreme 
this condition is satisfactory to the cut-throat classes ; but 
all other elements are by bitter experience converted to a 
faith in the need of government. It is discovered too late 
that government is the guarantee of every man's life and 
property, and of the regular order in the state ; and that its 
destruction, where its improvement was called for, has sur- 
rendered the people to their enemies. 



DEMOCEACY. 



Ill 



Nations are the sum of tlieir units, not merely having 
respect to the niiml)er of all, but to the value of each. If 
poverty, ignorance and vice degrade the individual, or if 
development under high conditions of culture has raised the 
character of the average man, the nadb or the zenith is 
reached. Democracy produces the higher average of indi- 
vidual excellence ; but it results in individualism which 
destroys the cohesion of the mass. Self-consciousness runs 
out of the line of just development into a mere intolerance 
of discipline under which the state crumbles down to its 
atoms, and these are combined anew by a new force. 

XI.— But though the democratic conceptions grew only 
in cities, life in cities was not the only necessity of their 
production, for they never appeared in the cities of Lace- 
demonia. There men differed from the lonians much as in 
our time the men of Germany differ from those of France. 
In France each man is confident of himself, but he suspects 
the motives of every other man. In Germany each man is 
individually diffident, but they trust one another. Brother- 
hood, friendship, mutual inter-dependence are their most 
distinguishing traits, and they have faith in their banded 

numbers. 

These are intellectual attributes due to race, produced 
by ages of growth in which certain types, by success, 
acquired pre-eminence, in which certain standards of ex- 
cellence in humanity were favored by the life of the 
people ; but they account for differences in the histories 
of these modern nations, and the differences in the histories 
of the ancient nations were perhaps produced by analogous 

causes. 

XII.— Montesquieu has made the observation as to 
ancient free states, that the great ones perished through 
corruption, and the small ones were destroyed by their 



112 Ajs^cieitt states. 

nelglilbors— wliicli might seem to estalblish the impossibility 
of the republic as a permanent type. But the truth is that 
no great well-established republic has yet perished in 
historic times ; for as the ancient democracies extended 
their limits, they ceased to be republican, and became 
feudal. All parts were dependent upon and subordinate 
to the central city. Other cities adhered to the primary city 
as they were conquered by its forces or became its allies. 

If they were its allies they were not properly a part of 
it, and were never accounted as additions in such a sense 
that they made a small republic a great one. If one city 
conquered another, that was not a republican way of 
growth. The monarchies grew in that way, and in so far 
as it grew by conquest, the democracy imperceptibly lost 
its character. Every growth is made up by the propor- 
tionate repetition and continuance of parts of the same 
nature, and every great state results from a small state thus 
by the addition of parts that assimilate with the whole. 
As in fact every small state is a confederacy of villages, 
every great state is a confederacy of small states, in which 
the union is more or less intimate ; and it must be so inti- 
mate that traces of separate existence have disappeared 
before the great state is definitely a unit. Thus England 
was once Northumberland, Mercia, Wessex, Essex and 
Sussex ; and the parts of France were hostile entities, as 
Brittany, Touraine, Artois, Normandy, and Provence. 
Modern political science has made great fabrics by the 
combination of separate national groups, through respect- 
ing their idiosyncracies, and through regard for traditions 
and special attributes ; but processes of this nature did not 
accord with the conceptions of the ancient world. Unifica- 
tion of groups occurred by assimilation, but it occurred 
rarely and not on a large scale ; for it did not often happen 



DEMOCEACT. ^^ 



that neigh-boring communities were so nearly in the same 
social condition that this was possihle. Therefore the 
general method of accretion was "by conquest, and as this 
was non-democratic, the growth of a state in any great 
degree was the necessary limit of its democratic character, 
and hence the absence of great governments of this kind. 
As the ancient democracies grew, the growth formed the 
basis for a tyrannical suppression of the democratic system. 



CHAPTER V. 

TYRANNY. 

I. — Tyrannies are accidents of freedom ; and tyrannical 
governments have occurred only in states where the democ- 
racy had previously possessed authority, or had made great 
progress toward the displacement of the authority of the 
nobles or other oligarchs. It is innocently said in an 
ancient author that 'Hhe cities of Ionia enjoyed freedom, 
Ibut were subject to the scourge of tyrants." There were 
no tyrants in the cities which did not enjoy freedom ; that 
is, freedom in the sense in which it is related to popular 
government ; and the immunity from one was related to the 
absence of the other. 

Revolution must have displaced the ancient monarchical 
system, and have destroyed or expelled the ancient royal 
family ; otherwise all personal rule will have relation to 
these, and will act under the influence of their traditions, 
and can never be conceived in the spirit in which the 
tyranny always appears. But when those ancient founda- 
tions are loosened, and the state appears to parties and 
adventurers as tossed hither and thither between opposing 
political forces, and as the possible prize of any desperate 
conflict, there must have been a great progress toward the 
final solution in democracy of all the distinct conceptions 
of authority that ruled men's minds in the earlier ages. 

II. — Although the tyranny must be treated as a separate 
form of government, it should not be overlooked that in so 



TYEAIO^Y. 



115 



far as it is regarded strictly as a form, it is in fact only the 
repetition in tlie new circumstances of tlie earliest sover- 
eignty. The tyranny, as a government of one person, might 
fall under the first form of the classification ; but reasons 
apart from considerations of form, reasons related to facts, 
not less essential than those of form, require that it should 
Ibe considered separately. 

Sovereigns who rule by theu^ own wHl are first as we 
have seen, and they create a social order and political rela- 
tions. Limitation in successive generations of the authority 
thus founded produces a free state with a constitution which 
is simply the record of the limitations extorted from power. 
But this progress of limitation has no ''finality." It con- 
tinues under the influence of an ever-growing pressure from 
below until the merest touch of authority at any point frets, 
and the very existence of authority becomes an irritation 
and has to be disguised in smooth phrases, so that the law 
itself assumes the language of a cringing demagogue. 
Thus the liberal government shades away into democratic 
anarchy ; society is practically, though not confessedly, 
returned to its first condition, and another dominant wiU 
appears and constructs another state. But though the 
tyrant and the primary sovereign are logically the same, 
there is historicaUy and morally a wide difi'erence in the 
cases in which they occur. There is, however, this rela- 
tion between them morally— they may both be salutary. 
Without the first there would have been no state, no issue 
from barbarism ; without the second, the lapse to barbarism 
or slavery is in most cases inevitable. The tyrant is at the 
last stage the only remedy— the only power that can bind 
up the elements and arrest the process of social and politi- 
cal disintegration. 

III.— Every tyrant constructs a new state out of the dis- 



116 ANCIENT STATES. 

ordered elements lie finds at hand, and this is precisely 
what is done by the first ruler ; but the fact is not so clearly 
perceptible in the case of the tyrant because he follows a 
brilliant history ; and patriotic fatuity and national vanity 
have always attributed to him the crime of destroying his 
country, of which he is sometimes guilty, rather than the 
service, which he more commonly renders, of arresting a 
progressive destruction, and preventing the descent to com- 
plete disintegration and barbarism. It is the brilliant 
history which precedes the tyrant that dazes the mind as to 
the nature of his position. The experiences of that history 
have exhausted the political vitality, and made this ruler 
not only possible but necessary ; and if he comes while the 
forms of other government are still apparent, and while 
they seem to be worki^ig easily, under a surface brilliant 
with all the splendors of an old civilization, it must be 
reflected that it is this brilliant surface which distracts our 
attention from the fact that there forms are mere exuviae 
from which the ancient life is gone ; a fact sufficiently 
evidenced by the circumstance that they crumble and dis- 
appear in the grasp of one resolute man. His very suc- 
cess exhibits that the political elements await only to 
be combined anew. No vital state was ever crushed in 
the hands of one man ; but one man has often saved a 
decaying state from impending ruin. This salutary opera- 
tion of the tyranny has not been commonly recognized. 
Much was said on this subject in the interest of JN'apoleon 
III. ; but as France was destroyed only to maintain his rule, 
the true nature of his position was so inconsistent with the 
theory that he was a savior of society, that the theory was 
made ridiculous ; and from that flagrant instance the infer- 
ence was hastily drawn, that this notion is always ridi- 
culous. 



TTEAKNY. 



117 



lY.— Immediately related things are confused by tlie 
common mind. Heat and fire are words that replace one 
another in ordinary speech ; the stars stand in common 
language for the powers that are supposed to dweU beyond 
them ; for in any related series of facts, that which fixes 
the attention, as it is the more obvious, is deemed the more 
real. Thus the tyranny is confounded with the conditions 
in which it appears, and the personal ruler is reproached 
as the cause of facts which necessarily preceded the possi- 
bHity of his existence. Dissolution is, indeed, imminent 
when the tyrant arises ; and he arrests its progress ; and 
the ultimate result is that his efforts initiate a new national 

career. 

But for the early death of Alexander, who left none to 
continue what he had begun, the last battle of the Greeks 
would have been fought a thousand years later than that 
at Cynoscephalse ; and the murder of Julius Csesar, which 
could not save the already ruined liberties of the Roman 
people, would have ended Roman history, but for what 
Caesar had already done, and that the heir of the great 
soldier and politician possessed a trace of his genius. It is 
lust therefore to regard the ruler who saves a state from the 
impending ruin of which democracy is the most common 
cause, not with that virulent reprobation which has its 
source in national vanity, but as a salutary fact ; excepting 
from the consideration always, those pseudo Csesars who 
base a conspiracy to seize the government on the allegation 
that society is threatened with disintegration. The condi- 
tion of society which must determine such a case, is a fact 
to be judged on the evidence, not to be accepted from any 
man's opinion. The relation of a capable ruler to a crum- 
bling state was well perceived at Rome, but it did not re- 
strain the *' patriots" of that city from murdering the man 



118 AlS^CIENT STATES. 

in whose life lay the last hope of the city ; the one man in 
whom — to the ability to restore order and authority— were 
united those sentiments of generosity and justice, those 
warm impulses in which the love of country is first ; in 
which fact we may see that they merely covered with the 
pretence of patriotism— as has always been common— their 
animus against the man whose success left no room in the 
state for the machinations of their party. 

Y. — Cicero, who was affiliated with the opponents of 
Csesar, yet saw the great leader' s relation to the state, as is 
indicated in the oration which he delivered on the occa- 
sion when Csesar amnestied Marcellus. Here are Cicero's 
thoughts, which exhibit how difi'erently from modern his- 
torians the man who knew most of Eome regarded Csesar : 

*'For who is there so ignorant of everything, so very 
new to the afiairs of the republic, so entirely destitute of 
thought, either for his own or for the general safety, as not 
to understand that his own safety is bound up with yours ? 
that the lives of all men depend on your single existence ? 
I myself, in truth, while I think of you day and night— as 
I ought to do— fear only the chances to which all men are 
liable, and the uncertain events of health, and the frail 
tenure of our common nature ; and I grieve that, while the 
republic ought to be immortal, it depends wholly on the 
life of one mortal man. But if to the chances of human 
life and the uncertain condition of man's health there were 
to be added also any conspiracy of wickedness and 
treachery, then what god should we think able to assist the 
republic, even if he were to desire to do so ? 

''All things, O Caius Csesar, which you now see lying 
stricken and prostrate — as it was inevitable they should be 
through tlie violence of war — must now be raised up again 
by you alone. The courts of justice must be re-established, 



TYEAKNY. 



119 



confidence mnst Ibe restored, licentiousness mnst "be re- 
pressed, the increase of population must be encouraged, 
everytMng wMch lias become lax and disordered must be 
braced up and strengthened by strict laws. In so vast a 
civil war, when there was such ardor of feeling and of war- 
like preparation on both sides, it was impossible but that, 
whatever the ultimate result of the war might be, the repub- 
lic, which had been violently shaken by it, should lose 
many ornaments of its dignity, and many bulwarks of its 
security, and that each general should do many things 
while in arms which he would have forbidden if clad in the 
garb of peace. And aU those wounds of war thus inflicted 
now require your attention, and there is no one except you 
who is able to heal them. Therefore I was concerned when 
I heard that celebrated and wise saying of yours, a have 
lived long enough to satisfy either nature or glory.' Suffi- 
ciently long, if you please, for nature, and I will add, if you 
like, for glory ; but, what is of more consequence than aR. 
else, certainly not long enough for your country." 

Cicero, it has been said in reference to this passage, and' 
in the attempt to explain away its force, believed that Cgesar • 
meant to restore the republic. Cicero was not so inex- 
perienced in politics, or so unacquainted with the history of 
nations, that he could believe it possible for one man to- 
revitalize what was then dead, and what in its origin had 
been the growth of centuries. It is more just to believe that 
Cicero thought Csesar meant to do precisely what is here 
regarded as the need of the occasion, bind up the wounds 
of war, and prevent the annihilation of the Eoman state by 
barbaric slaughter. This was Caesar's purpose. His mur- 
der did not destroy the state, for he had already given the 
inspiration of the new career; but it made the salvatiom 
coarse and vulgar. 



120 AlS'CIEiq-T STATES. 

YI. — Csesar's appropriation of the STipreme power dif- 
fered in some features from the more usual erection of the 
tyranny. There was no change in the political frame 
consequent upon his acts. All the offices were filled in the 
same way. The consuls, the tribunes, and the praetor stood, 
so far as was superficially apparent, in the same relations ; 
for Csesar himself held a constitutional office, and he 
simply stretched its functions to the purpose. All the 
other offices were like the shells we find on the seashore 
from which the living organism is gone, and the whole 
source of political vitality was in the one office held by 
Csesar. It was in Rome then much as it would be in the 
United States now if the commander of the army should 
become the supreme power, and the people should continue 
to elect all the constitutional officers from the president 
down, but the acts of none should be valid without the 
commander's approval. 

Csesar was dictator, or magister populi. This office had 
existed in the Roman constitution for several centuries, and 
was originally an incident of the league with the Latins. 
It was ordinarily latent, but was called into activity as 
occasion seemed to require. It was a provision which 
enabled the state to move its basis without revolution ; to 
pass from the adjusted rights of persons in deliberate 
assemblies, or the government of peace, to the personal 
authority or government of war. For four centuries this 
office was always found salutary and never dangerous to 
the state ; and it was the earliest practical recognition that 
the constitutional forms and balances which guarantee 
public liberty in tranquil times are impediments to the 
public defence, and paralyze the nation in the presence of 
the enemy. This office gave such elasticity to the Roman 
constitution that Rome was, in consequence, a free state 



TYEATTirr. 



121 



when freedom was safe, and an arlDitrary sovereignty when 
only an arbitrary sovereignty conld survive the storms of 
war and the perils of faction. This office was, therefore, a 
fiction which presented an inevitable personal ruler as a 
constitutional functionary ; and had Csesar lived the world 
might have been benefited by a great example that states 
may be saved in the worst circumstances without departure 
from consecrated forms, for Csesar was too great to prefer 
Ms personal glory to the glory of his country. Brutus 
injured hu.manity by making that example impossible. 

YII._Between popular sovereignty and individual sov- 
ereignty—between the democratic system in which all are 
not only equally unrestrained by the law, but concerned in 
the government, and the tyrannical system in which all 
are equally subordinated to the will of one despotic ruler- 
there seems a necessary and irreconcilable opposition ; and 
at the first consideration of the subject it is difficult to com- 
prehend how they can have any possible, much less an 
inevitable relation to one another, as they are seen to have 
in history, and as they are admitted to have in all political 
theory. But the philosophical relations of the two are seen 
upon examination to be as plain and clear as their practical 
relation is constant; for the eventual condition of the 
democracy is as to form indistinguishable from the tyranny. 
Pericles and Pisistratus differ essentially by their moral and 
intellectual aspects. It is necessary, therefore, only to 
change the mood, and the one runs into the other. An ab- 
solute central power anywhere produces a general equality 
of subordination to its will; and a general equality— a 
democratic level of society— produces a centralized author- 
ity as its organ. In proportion as democracy is extreme, 
tyranny is imminent. Every impulse radiates from a cen- 
tral point where all are subordinated to one will; every 



122 ANCIENT STATES. 

activity tends to produce tliat point wliere all are in theory 
equally sovereign. In every case tlie supreme authority is 
presumably tlie organ of tlie popular will, and tMs is his 
distinction from the tyrant who acts his own will. This dis- 
tinction is a fiction of the law. Brush away that cobwelb 
and the national executive is the nation's lord. Democ- 
racy involves, therefore, in its extreme term a nominally or 
really supreme person ; a person supreme as Pericles was 
in Athens by his own genius and the popular consent. But 
if this supreme man has less lofty aims than those of 
Pericles, if he is less confident of his genius, and desires to 
guarantee himself equally against the result of its lapses, 
or against the changes of that popular humor in which is 
the consent to his supremacy, he converts the temple in 
which he stands into a fort, and holds it against those who 
admitted him ; and the amorphous condition of equality — 
the absence of centres around which the people might 
gather and combine for concerted action— renders effective 
resistance impossible. The rule of the individual is a fact, 
the sovereignty of the many is a theory. The theory always 
falls into the fact to which it is opposed in name only. For 
the rule of all is, of course, anarchy. Some smaller num- 
ber must be trusted ; and that number must trust a still 
smaller number. This reaches its extreme in the trust 
reposed in one man ; which trust is not betrayed for gener- 
ations perhaps, but the man who will betray it inevitably 
comes sooner or later. 

yill. — Every barrier in the frame of society or in politi- 
cal institutions which might make difficult the seizure of 
supreme power is broken down by the people, not, of 
course, to facilitate the seizure, but because these barriers 
are regarded as restraints, and as strongholds of inequality. 
Equality is thus secured at the expense of the capacity for 



TYEAIO^T. 123 



defence, and the presumed oppression of dominant classes 
is exchanged for a condition wMcli opens tlie way to a real 
oppressor. Thus the tyrant resulted from the failure of the 
ancient world to find a way in which to give practical effect 
to the theory of popular sovereignty. He was a conse- 
quence of the necessity that society should entrust some 
person with the execution of its wiU. He did not always 
stop at the point up to which the theory presumed that his 
trust extended. He could not discriminate, or did not care 
to. And the very difficulty of tliis distinction gave rise to 
the pseudo tyrant— made the iHicit seizure of supreme 
power a common object of ambition, and produced tyrants 
Iby artificial processes. Doubtless every state in Greece 
might have produced tyrants eventually, but in many 
tyrants arose prematurely, because the natural process 
once observed was improved upon by the intrigues of pre- 
tenders. 

IX.— An important element in the character of the 
tyrant is his relation to foreign states. Ionia was the 
peculiar seat of the origin of this form, not merely, perhaps, 
because it was the seat of the democratic spirit, but also 
because of its neighborhood to the Persian empire, and 
because the form of authority that tilled the largest space 
in human attention there was the Persian satrapy. In the 
splendor and absolute supremacy of these rulers the am- 
bitious princes of Grecian race saw a model that early 
stirred their envy ; and as they acquired wealth and every 
other element of princely grandeur, they still felt that their 
accountability in their own governments, so offensive to 
princely pride, placed them in unfavorable comparison with 
the lordly servants of the great king. Hence it was, per- 
haps, that the great tyrannies were all established in im- 
portant seats of commerce— and communication with the 



124 ANCIEIS^T STATES. 

foreign world— at first in Asia Minor, and snlbseqnently in 
Greece ; and that the tyranny of Polycrates at Samos was 
the most dazzling in the history of antiquity. Periander at 
Corinth, and Dionysins at Syracuse, established their 
power on the same model, but were feeble as reflections at 
a greater distance ; while in the tyranny of Pisistratus at 
Athens the connection with the Asiatic ideas is so clear that 
the son of the tyrant was disposed to hold Athens as a 
Persian satrapy. 



BOOK IL 



MODERN STATES 



CHAPTER I. 

VARIATIONS DUE TO MODERN CIVILIZATION. 

I. — Albsolnte monarcMes, constitutional monarcMes, 
republics, and despotic military states, are the modern 
equivalents of the four forms under wMcli we have classi- 
fied the governments of ancient nations. In their relation 
to social conditions, and in their relations to one another, 
these states exhibit the constancy of the operation of the 
natural laws under the influence of which states arise, and 
by which they succeed one another. In the feudal mon- 
archy we have a state identical in origin, system, and pur- 
pose with the primary personal sovereignty ; that is to say, 
a state in which force and military domination are the first 
facts, and which arises in an anarchical condition of society 
and perpetuates itseK by its adaptation to the circumstances. 
For a certain period in the existence of this state the power 
of the sovereign is without restraint. Although the feudal 
monarchy is not a less definite type than the primary 
sovereignty, yet in the various monarchies of the middle 
ages, in which we find collectively the lineaments of the 
type, with their resemblances, there are also many dissimi- 
larities. These are mostly due to difierences in the races of 
men ; to their different characters, and to differences of con- 
dition resulting from climate ; and these dissimilarities 
mostly concern the point at which the simple sovereignty 
yields to limitations and restraints. 

Its limitation begins early in proportion to the number 



128 MODEEN STATES. 

and strength of the centres of subordinate anthoritj ; per- 
sists or is overcome as the central or the subordinate points 
of authority have the nearer relation to existing social or 
climatic conditions ; and as it yields gives place to a power 
practically identical in nature with that of the early oli- 
garchy. In the scheme of the feudal society there were 
points of organization everywhere, and the minor points 
were of the same consequence locally as the lord paramount 
was nationally, and nations diverged as the character and 
circumstances were such as to develop the local points or 
to smother them and produce a uniform surface of society ; 
and in one direction, through extinction of the minor 
localizations of authority the monarch rose step by step to 
such unlimited power as existed in Eussia under Peter the 
Great, and in the other through the vigorous local authority 
of the minor lords a central sovereignty became impossible 
as in Germany; while lesser degrees of development in 
either direction appeared in France and England respec- 
tively. Great and thrifty states always resulted where this 
central power was limited accurately in the general interest, 
but where the limitations never crippled the legitimate 
operation of its authority. 

In every country the feudal sovereign is limited by the 
aristocracy, never by the people ; but the word aristocracy 
must be understood as having its proper meaning in 
accordance with the ideas of the age and race. In a time 
of constant war, and with a warlike people, the men of the 
sword are necessarily the best men in a practical sense, and 
prowess and military leadership were the general founda- 
tions of the modern aristocracies, and the spirit which made 
them such persisted in Germany and England ; but with a 
people who are contentious rather than warlike, the lawyers 
may be deemed the best in a restricted sphere, as they 



YAEIATIONS DUE TO MODEEK CIYILIZATIOIT. 129 

proved in France ; and where superstition controls the 
general thought, the aristocrats will be a caste of priests, 
as happened in Italy. But the name of monarchy, as 
applied to the authority of the individual ruler in the 
mediaeval states, did not disappear as the aristocracy rose 
to superior power. Recognition was made by the use of 
adjectives descriptive of degrees of limitation ; but these 
degrees were so numerous that it has been found simpler to 
proceed from the other extreme and apply an adjective to 
the unlimited form, and call that which remained monarchy 
really, absolute monarchy ; and leave the general name 
to the whole class in which this rule had so undergone 
greater or less modification. 

Constitutional or limited monarchy is a government in 
which the so-called monarch is the functionary of the will 
of the aristocracy. In some cases the number of the aristo- 
crats whose will is potential is so small that the form is-, 
actually the same as the ancient oligarchy. In other cases 
the circle is so large as to verge toward democracy — the- 
republic — in which, in fact, the form eventually disappears.. 
From the constitutional monarchy, in its most liberal form,, 
to the republic, which is a constitutional democracy, the' 
change is rather one of names than of facts. 

History supplies no instance of the fall of a well-con- 
stituted and organized republic as the republic is under- 
stood in modern times. No republic distinctly established, 
and in operation has yet gone through the degrees of 
political vitality; and the consideration of the circum- 
stances in which the career of the modern republic will 
close, must be in the realm of theory. Without definite 
facts to observe, we must weigh the changes that modern 
thought and life seem likely to impress upon the processes; 

by which the ancient democracies passed away. 
9 



130 MODERIS" STATES. 

In the olbservation of these forms it must T3e noticed that 
that which is earliest in point of time is not the earliest in 
type— not the primary form nor the nearest to the primary 
form. Time is not an element of any consequence in the 
case, and the defect of history is that it always proceeds loj 
time, and hence never conceives political facts or forces in 
theii' just relation. Kussia, which started in the career of 
feudalism as early as France and England did, is now at 
the point where England was in the time of the Norman 
kings, and where France was under Louis XIY.; and 
France, Ibetween 1789 and 1810, went through processes that 
at Russia's pace would fill a thousand years of her history. 
Race, climate, social condition, and what may "be called— 
not to go into recondite causes— the accidents of history, 
determine the point at which one nation's progress will loe 
stayed while another goes on. With a people practically 
removed from contact with the world at large, uninventive, 
oppressed, sluggish, the political condition may be rudi- 
mentary, though in point of time they are ages older than a 
more advanced neighbor just beyond the frontier. 

It must be noted further that as to every modern govern- 
ment there is the same relation of ultimate possibilities in 
its history that we have seen in the history of ancient states. 
Every absolute monarchy may persist indefinitely as cir- 
cumstances favor it ; or may pass by successive limitation 
into the constitutional form. Every constitutional monarchy 
may revert by gradations till it reaches again the absolute 
type — or move onward to the fullest limit of republican 
organization. Every republic has in it the possibilities of a 
tyranny, but a wise and moderate people, a climate that 
does not encourage luxurious habits, intelligence in political 
perceptions, and immovable standards of public honesty, 
will guarantee ages of safety to freedom ; and the tyranny, 



VAEIATIOT^S DUE TO M0DER:N' CIVILIZATIOIT. 131 

if it come, may be Ibut a step toward the exclusion of 
dangerous facts. 

In the general collapse of the ancient world, in the dis- 
appearance of states, and the crnmlbling away of societies, 
the one thing that remained and was constant, was war. 
From war the first societies arose, and by war they went 
down ; and out of war — centuries of continued war — came 
the newer societies. All those times, during which the 
modern monarchy was in formation, are called dark ages, 
for an obvious reason. War had put out the lights. Uni- 
versities, states, governments, jurisprudences, philosophies, 
literatures — all were swept away. All that chaos is analo- 
gous to the obscurity and formlessness which preceded the 
first government ; and as the conditions that the earliest 
control created first made possible the historical observation 
of humanity, so those originating in this newer organization 
revived and extended that possibility. 

II.— But while the forms as the products of the opera- 
tion of human impulses and appetites are more or less re- 
lated and similar in every age, it may be said of states in 
modern times that the old forms recur on higher historic 
planes— -at higher levels of the political atmosphere ; and 
as the variation of level modifies all the types of vegetable 
and animal life— develops unimagined possibilities in one 
direction, and in the other extinguishes certain forms — so 
does the larger intelligence of man and his changed social 
and intellectual condition vary his political activities. 

Modern history and ancient history are alike as to their 
essential facts ; but the same facts are presented on a 
different stage, and, therefore, with different effect. In the 
greater complication and variety of modern life, the simpli- 
city of the scheme is lost, and the operation of political 
principles is less clear. It may be that this excessive com- 



132 MODEEN STATES. 

plication is merely apparent, and that tlie appearance is 
due to the greater detail in wMcli modern history is known 
to ns ; but it seems to be a reflection of the increased variety 
of modern life, and the larger scope for rational activities 
that results from the ampler moral and intellectual horizon 
of civilized over semi-barbarous humanity. Ancient and 
modern history are in their similarities and differences like 
the same picture seen in outline and in color. With the 
bare outline, or simple light and shade, the eye dwells on 
the forms presented and the significancy of the composition 
as expressed in lines and forms ; but the later dazzle of 
color distracts the eye from this just perception. 

Modern history is, in its political aspect, the history of 
Europe, or of the European people in other countries, or 
of the operation of this people on other races. All other 
history, though it occur in recent times, is politically 
ancient history. It deals with the same facts and methods 
as characterized the most primitive times. But in Europe 
there was highly developed what seems never to have 
existed, or but dimly, with Asiatic peoples— an intellectual 
condition that we may call political consciousness. As in 
the physical world the possession of consciousness makes a 
deep line of distinction between scales of vitality in animal 
life, so with humanity this condition of political conscious- 
ness becomes the point of departure for the existence of 
states where before there were only troops or herds of sub- 
ject creatures. At first organization is evidently instinctive, 
and all the early stages of political growth are reached 
under instinctive impulses ; and if then there happens 
any conscious participation of the intellect, the direc- 
tion taken under the intellectual influence is a false direc- 
tion. Instinct provides better for those early dangers and 
necessities than thought does ; and the conscious use of 



YAEIATIOISTS DUE TO MODEEIS" CIVILIZATION. 133 

the intellect seems to throw the nation out of harmony 
with the current of human impulses. But at a later 
period the production of this perception becomes at once a 
condition of superiority and a source of calamities never 
experienced by those who keep to the even line of human 
instincts. China, at the stability of which men wonder, has 
remained for scarcely numerable ages always the same, her 
millions in the midst of conquest and the change of dynas- 
ties apparently without a dream that they, as individuals, 
had any relation to such events. No turtle at the bottom 
of a pond in the woods could be more indifferent to the sale 
of the property in that pond, and a change of owners, than 
the Chinese have apparently been to the changes that have 
taken place in the ownership of the Chinese throne. In the 
meantime the many states of Greece have arisen and fallen ; 
Egypt has come and gone; Carthage and Eome have 
passed away ; all battling like eagles in the tree tops, and 
in the blue air about the craggy summits ; but though the 
eagles have gone and the turtle remains, it is not conceiv- 
able that any eagle of them all would ever have bartered 
the grand dominion of his flight for the muddy tranquillity 
of the reptile' s life. 

III.— Political consciousness, therefore— the perception 
by men of their relations to one another in communities, of 
their power to shape their own political destinies, of the 
fact that there is an apparent choice in the forms of 
states, and several possible divergencies in every political 
career, and that they may frame their community in one 
way or another, or force it into one or another groove as 
they will, the conception of an artiflcial political life sub- 
ject to the intellect as the earlier one was subject to instinct 
—is the first force in the production of the variations that 
later states present. 



134 MOBEET^ STATES.. 

But tlie remarkalble complexity of later political life is, 
perhaps, always due to the misapplication of means to 
ends ; to the failure to comprehend exactly how to produce 
the political effect which was conceived, and the production 
of which was intended by a measure that really produced 
some widely different effect. This miscarriage of intention 
is conspicuous in all history. Indeed the greater part of 
history is made up of the record of this blind fumbling at 
political purposes. In the first process states grew, and 
growth is always accurate. But in the conscious structure 
of any contrivance, error is always present. 

In illustration of this point it may be noted that nations 
err more as they act on mere conceptions of the intellect 
rather than await the pressure of necessity. In France they 
are what is called a logical people. This disposition leads 
in politics to ''consistency;" to legislation starting from 
analogies rather than from grievances and practical re- 
quirements. They lay down some general principle for a 
line of action, and abolish all laws or institutions that seem 
inconsistent with it without regard to more imperative 
reasons for retaining them. If the analogies are true this is 
bad enough ; but if they are false, as they commonly are, 
it is infinitely worse. 

But the instinctive impulses are not in fact displaced by 
conscious intentions ; they are only modified in their opera- 
tion, corrected or perverted as the case may be. There is 
enough of the impulse to preserve the same general ten- 
dencies, as is seen in the continuation more or less disguised 
of the three primary forms ; but in their adaptation there 
is a constant reference to experience. Here, as before, the 
preponderance of one or another of the three social elements 
determines infallibly, sooner or later, the nature of the 
government. There is no new form in politics, but the 



YAEIATIONS DUE TO MODEKN CIVILIZATIOIT. 135 

old forms are smothered and hidden and sometimes 
crippled by contrivances intended to avoid evils that are 
thongiit to have resulted from one or another of them in 
given circumstances. Moreover, the hattle on one side or 
another is waged beyond the limits of apparent settlement, 
and those who formerly gave way when beaten, now pre- 
tend to give way, and accept the new forms only to pervert 
them to their own uses. 

lY.— An early, an almost immediate, result of the per- 
ceptions of political consciousness— and the discovery that 
a nation's history is in some degree under the influence of 
its will— is the growth and operation of the desire to force 
its movement in the current of some national passion or 
ardently oherished aspiration. 

Every political scheme involves certain general concep- 
tions which are either the aspirations of the people or 
instrumentalities related to those aspirations. These aspi- 
rations become what we might call the objective points of 
the national endeavor. They are intellectual or moral con- 
ceptions, and the political scheme is framed and changed 
with the purpose to make them realities, or rejected because 
it fails in that purpose. But the movement of every people 
toward its ideal conceptions of excellence is impeded and 
limited by the facts of its life— by the adverse circum- 
stances in which the drama of its history is unfolded ; 
and, therefore, these conceptions are to be regarded as 
forces separate from the forms or facts. They are in ac- 
tual history related to the facts almost inextricably; but 
in any scheme of political science they must be conceived 
separately, for as they vary in their relation to national 
history, as one or another is deemed of greater consequence, 
there is a deep and essential difference in the character 
of the history. But the aspirations of society are con- 



136 MODEEI^ STATES. 

sidered not simply by themselyes but in relation with, what 
must be abolished before they can be realized ; which gives 
an ampler view of possible progress toward any one of 
them. 

With one nation the love of glory and the desire 
for dominion over its neighbors, its pride in its real or 
imagined prowess runs to such extravagant develop- 
ment, that all things in its growth have to be tried and 
judged only by relation to their value in war. With 
others the love of liberty, the conception of personal 
equality in the state, the moral notions of justice, or 
some other accidental fact in history, is seized upon and 
becomes a nucleus aroujid wMch the thought of the nation 
crystallizes. 

Nations judge themselves by these standards — and en- 
deavor to modify their condition and tbeir laws rather on 
these ideal conceptions of excellence, than upon the actual 
needs of their i^osition ; for the great modern agency of 
national movement is rather the reformer than the states- 
man ; and while the statesman is one who considers all the 
circumstances of the nation' s position, and advises action as 
seems wise with reference to these, the reformer is a projec- 
tion upon the nation' s history of its aggregate lunacy, and 
urges it always to give itself up to the impulse of its domi- 
nant passion. 

V. — It is not, however, a matter of indifference m a 
nation' s history whether its grand aspiration is any one or 
another of those above named ; for there is a relation of 
these dominant thoughts to the general activity of human- 
ity. In what has been called *'the spirit of the age," the 
tendency in one or another direction of all the nations taken 
together, there seems to be exhibited a real current of 
human progress, not influenced by the passion for ideals— 



VAEIATIOXS DUE TO MODEEN CIYILIZATIOZS'. 137 

and it may l»e of moment to a nation what relation its 
passion bears to that current. 

National peimanency or mutation, growth or decay, 
depend upon the law of the adaptation of the nation to the 
age ; its relation in character and quality to the state of 
civilization that is then dominant in the world ; and fi'om 
consideration of this relative adaption, nations may be 
called positive or negative. Those nations are positive that 
are in full agreement with the facts and tendencies that 
make up the spirit of an age, and those are negative that 
are not in such relation ; so that one nation is positive in 
one period and another in another, and the positive of 
one century is perhaps the negative of the next. 

Exaggeration of theu^ type is the general cause of decay 
in nations, either by the extreme development of those 
characteristics to which their greatness was due, or by 
persistency; the mere continuation of a spirit or system 
that was great for one age, but in another is utterly out of 
relation with the world. They cannot change, but the 
world changes ; and unless they are great enough to hold 
the world to their standard— which Eome for a time did— 
they fall under the hand of those whose qualities properly 
adapt them to the new conditions of strength, and they fall 

of course by war. 

National importance originates with the appearance of 
some quality in virtue of which the people are especially 
fitted to the circumstances in which they live, and in virtue 
of which they are not only distinguished from their neigh- 
bors, but are stronger than their neighbors. Growth is in 
the direction of that quality, and is the pursuit of its ten- 
dencies ; the fuller development of its relation to the current 
facts of existence; and decrepitude and decay are the 
results of such an adherence to the standard which that 



138 MODEEIT STATES. 

attribute prodnces, or sucli an extreme piirsuit of its ten- 
dencies as we see in the individual when the pursuit of an 
idea drifts into monomania. 

For in the distortion that results from excessive activity 
of one sort is involved an incapacity to meet the demand 
that may require activity in another direction. Individuals 
may specialize themselves in societies and thrive through 
the consequent division of attributes and excellencies ; but 
the nation that specializes itself prepares its ruin, which is 
only more or less delayed as the national attribute tends 
more or less toward or from the high road on which 
humanity moves. 

Such an attribute may be a vice or a virtue, either one 
or the other in the prejudice of the different morality of 
different ages ; but it obtains control of the whole vitality 
of the nation ; it dominates every thought and fact ; and 
the people become the servant and slave of their acci- 
dental excellence. All activities are colored and shaped 
by relation to that attribute. Enterprises are measured 
by it ; and the most necessary are neglected, or the most 
visionary are undertaken as they harmonize or not with its 
dictates. 

In the world of human attributes, in the various ages of 
human history, there is a sort of j)rocession of the races 
and families of men ; each race or family dominant in the 
conditions best adapted to its attributes physical and in- 
tellectual, and swept away as the conditions of national 
existence change, and the attributes produced in one or 
another become rather detriments than advantages. 

Tenacity of purpose was the leading characteristic of the 
Roman mind. It produced resolution in battle, and in 
politics unalterable adhesion to what was conceived as a 
proper course of action ; and the perception of the proper 



variatio:n"S due to modeeit civilizatioit. 139 

course of action is taken from consideration of national 
necessity and advantage, and from tlie morality of tlie age 
as to right and justice. But considerations of national 
advantage wiU be erroneous as the statecraft is defective ; 
and conceptions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, 
are "buoys, not headlands ; and an unalterable tenacity, 
therefore, taken from standards that change or may be 
erroneously seen, cannot always issue advantageously. 
Tenacity of purpose was the want of the world when Home 
arose, as it is always in the crumble and drift of devitalized 
civilizations. Diminished faith and weakened aspiration 
troubled thought ; and in the presence of the ruined systems 
of the Assyrian and Phcenican world, the decrepit civili- 
zation of the Etrurian family, and the faltering step of 
Greece, the simple vigor and mute determination of Kome 
encountered rather a wondering auditory than an effective 

opposition. 

Rome's great attribute, therefore, in that condition of 
the world was such as to give her dominion over other 
nations in exact proportion to her physical power to make 
her virtue felt. Here her tenacity kept her steady to heroic 
perceptions of the spirit of manhood, and to high standards 
of duty, but resolution in battle was its grand result at this 
point. Strategy was conceived mainly as the science of 
getting in presence of the enemy in advantageous conditions, 
and the Roman arms and the steady intensity of the Roman 
character did the rest. Certain types of humanity are fitted 
to thrive in the war that is an exchange more or less scien- 
tific of different sorts of missiles or projectiles, and possess 
ingenuity to continue the necessary machinery ; another 
type thrives in the hand to hand battle of sword or spear. 
The Romans were in the ancient world the most conspicuous 
example of the latter class, and the warfare of that age was 



140 MODEEN STATES. 

mostly a series of hand to hand conflicts. In these the 
physical vigor and the desperate tenacity of the Eomans 
naturally throve ; and the great quality that gave them 
dominion is seen to-day in its decay in the desperate ferocity 
of the Italian character under the stimulus of any excite- 
ment. 

But the Koman tenacity — the firmness — that was the 
highest virtue in one view was far otherwise when the 
direction was false. As that quality which we commonly 
call firmness when we approve the purpose toward which 
it moves, is called obstinacy if it seems to Ibe erroneously 
exercised, so a natural tenacity of purpose may prove 
eventually a mere adhesion to false gods, and may seem to 
flow, or may flow in fact, from a barbarian incapacity to 
perceive that a changed state of the world requires a change 
of attitude for those who would be foremost in the race of 
men. 

So tenacity of purpose may be the sure source of a 
nation' s ruin when there is not the perception to apply it 
properly, and when, consequently, it leads to rejection of 
the thought of the age, and puts the nation in a posture of 
opposition to the changes that thought must inevitably 
produce. It rejects aU counsel drawn from the facts, and 
binds the nation to acts within the small circle of precon- 
ceived fancies, and so keeps it forcibly out of the current 
in which it must move to continue great. 

Natural states — agglomerated groups of people of the 
same race or of assimilated races — are not political or geo- 
graphical accidents, but organic masses of human vitality 
with distinct character and will, and other vital attributes 
which differ according to the circumstances in which they 
exist ; and the political growth and history of the state is 
the necessary consequence of those vital attributes, qualified 



YAEIATIOITS DUE TO MODEE^ CIYILIZATIO:^-. 141 

or limited by the power of the nation as measured against 
the power of its neighbors. 

Existence in states may, therefore, be assimilated to 
existence in the individual, and the comparison gives the 
application of conceptions with which we are familiar in 
the contemplation of individual life. Ordinary progress in 
humanity depends upon the decay of the units. Death is 
the condition of vital activity. One generation dies and 
gives place to another, and the new one accepts the new 
ideas and new conditions in which it grows up, which 
would have been fought and opposed by the other. In the 
same way— though the power of adaptation in a nation is 
far larger than in the individual— it has its limit, and when 
that is reached, the whole force of nature fights for the 
disintegration of the state, and its dissolution is inevitable. 
Capacity to accept change has, therefore, a relation to 
national longevity, and this capacity depends upon the 
inner facts of the nation's life which have grown with the 
outer facts of its political history. 

YI.— War is the final test of systems ; and they are the 
best systems which prevail in war, because they are the 
systems which produce the best type of manhood, or the 
type best fitted for the prevailing conditions. In this there 
seems to be involved the contradiction that a better type is 
produced in barbarism than in civilization because it has 
so often happened that half savage races, like the Tartar 
hordes of Asia, have swept over the best races of the world ; 
but this is merely an apparent contradiction, for barbarism 
is superior only when civilization has run into some extreme 
which has sacrificed the equilibrium of qualities which con- 
stitutes its excellence. Then comes tlie scourge of barbarian 
success, as if the power above all would teach by flagrant 
examples what directions civilization must not take if it 



142 MODEElSr STATES. 

would not forfeit all it has gained. War is a trial that 
operates directly for the preservation of the standard of 
vitality. If the age has gone to an intellectual extreme, 
it gives the victory to physical power; if the age tends 
to mere barbarian vigor and ferocity, victory gives its 
premiums to the intellectual superiority that has con- 
trived new methods ; and if vigor and intellect have divided 
the world between them, and hold themselves all sufficient, 
some moral race arises like a storm from the desert and 
sweeps all before it. 

But war does not merely operate on these positive con- 
ditions. It operates also by the strictly political facts. In 
certain political systems war is the inevitable consequence 
of every difficulty ; wars are more frequent and the peril is 
greater ; and systems affiect the fitness or unfitness of the 
nation for war, and so lead to success or ruin. 

War tries political systems at two stages : first as the 
system tends to produce wars ; next as the people pro- 
duced by the system, or under it, are fitted for the prosecu- 
tion of war. In its operation at the first of these trials its 
tendency is to make war less frequent because it extirpates 
the merely warlike races. In its next operation it favors 
the system that produces the superior average of manhood 
— that is, the superior average as superiority is measured 
by standards taken from a consideration of all the condi- 
tions in which the nation lives. In both these operations, 
therefore, war is the positive barrier against human degra- 
dation ; the preserver and cultivator of those advances that 
constitute civilization. The frequency of wars has relation 
to race, and to political system, either as a consequence of 
race, or as due to other causes. Some races are known in 
history only for their wars, and seem to have produced 
generations of people that could not live in peace. Perhaps 



YAEIATIO^S DUE TO MODEEIST CIVILIZATION. 143 

a tliousand years would not suffice to produce a Comanclie 
planter save as a feeble result of uncompreliended instruc- 
tion. If races of tMs sort produce a goyernment, it is con- 
structed on military principles ; its object is the prosecution 
of war, it cultivates a warlike spirit. It is even made 
shameful to possess any other, and all power is in the 
hands of warlike nobles, who provide that every dispute 
shaU be settled by the sword. Cases that would be deter- 
mined by peaceful means if the national advantage were 
rationally sought, are made to produce war that the nobles 
may gratify their pride, love of glory, and power. States 
of this kind perish by the waste of war. If authority be 
rightly based, the public force kept on foot is only necessary 
for operations against individuals ; but in the states of the 
nature considered, under cover of the necessity for the 
ordinary operations of authority, there is kept on foot a 
force sufficient to repress all contrary will on the part of 
the people. Against possible expressions of discontent 
within and against the common enemy the whole state is 
kept under arms. It happened in Greece repeatedly that 
from half to three-quarters of the men of a nation perished 
in war, and the remainder accepted slaves and strangers 
into their community on a basis of equality. These, unable 
to make peace and unfit for war, perished in their turn be- 
fore some implacable native, and the state disappeared. As 
apart from race wars are most produced by the extreme 
pursuit of party differences in governments of distributed 
sovereignty ; for whatever obviously weakens a nation pro- 
vokes the war in which its stronger neighbors appropriate 
its land. Great emergencies, which test to the utmost the 
vitality of a state, occur in the history of all states ; and 
they survive or are trampled in the dust, reduced to tribu- 
tary provinces, or blotted out of existence altogether. In 



144 modee:^ states. 

wars between states superficially equal, calamity of this 
kind occurs commonly because of internal causes tliat have 
sapped its natural resources. Either the long-continued 
dominancy of a conservative party — an insidious enemy 
that in every state under the sun, and in every age, has 
opposed and always opposes that movement of national 
vitality which secures the greatest national vigor — thus 
sacrifices the good of the whole to the passions, the pre- 
eminence, or the property of a part ; or dissolutions and 
disintegrations of the state under the anarchical impulses 
of so-called liberals has destroyed that last resource of 
national defence— the patriotic spirit. If authority holds a 
nation too rigidly in its grasp, repression smothers that 
popular life which keeps the nation abreast with its neigh- 
bors ; keeps it in that relation with its age which constitutes 
its greatness. If it does not fall away — does not become 
positively decrepit — it becomes negatively so, because it 
holds its position anchored to the system of one century, 
while all about it move forward to the larger thought, 
clearer purposes, and different practices of another century. 
Perhaps the period of the vigorous vitality of a system has 
passed away, but the system lingers. 

YII. — Perhaps the greatest source of divergency in 
modern states is the activity of '^ parties," or divisions of 
the people acting together for some common purpose, 
generally under the influence of a theory of moral excellence 
or national welfare, or under an impulse of interest. In 
the simpler periods of national existence there are no parties 
because there is no alternative line of national conduct ; 
only one way is open to safety, and the other leads to 
evident ruin, and no citizen can advise the dangerous path 
with safety to himself. But as a nation becomes in some 
degree an arbiter in its own destiny, its more complicated 



YAEIATIOI^S DUE TO MODEE]^' CIVILIZATIO^q". 145 

life opens many avennes for its exuberant energy which it 
is advised to follow on one hand or to avoid on the other ; 
and this change has reached a new development in the 
great modern states never known in the ancient world ; and 
the forces that endeavor to dii'ect and shape the national 
career on these great doubtful issues are called political 
parties. 

But this is not the only sphere of parties. They are the 
organs of all differences and conflicts, whether these touch 
the general relation of the nation to its neighbors or parts 
of the nation within itself. In this particular they succeed 
in modern states to the conflict that was waged by the 
classes in ancient states. Every conflict in a state, however 
trivial or pitiful its original purport, assumes eventually 
the form of an appeal to some one of those national aspira- 
tions or passions above referred to, and thus inevitably 
takes a relation to the democratic energy and to the 
elements that resist this energy, and is figured as a fight for 
the enlargement of liberty, or the retention of some whole- 
some restraint. But, in fact, all real battles of the national 
elements in parties have that relation of the supx)ort of 
authority on one hand, and an attempted mitigation or 
disintegration of authority on the other hand. 

In the actions and reactions of politics the case is for 

the enfranchisement of the people or for the assertion of 

authority, and the j)roblems eventually are always the 

same : How to enlarge the sphere within which the people 

shall have freedom of action and thought without Aveaken- 

ing the state as a whole by the extreme limitation of 

authority ; and how to shift easily the pressure of authority 

from points where in tlie changes of time it is found to be 

no longer necessary to points as to which men were formerly 

free, but can be free no longer without general danger. 
10 



l^Q MODEEK STATES. 

On the one hand authority mnst "bind the nnits into a com- 
mon force for defence, and some other purposes ; on the 
other the ohjects of the existence of a state are such as re- 
late to the happiness of individuals ; and the difficulty of 
reconciling activities that are thus inconsistent is the "bur- 
den of political science. But the parties that respectively 
urge in every state one or the other of these tendencies take 
comparatively little note of the difficulties, for one believes 
that all evils are due to the failure of authority ; the other 
that all evils are due to the denial of freedom ; and from 
the simple standpoint of these views they act respectively 
with all the energy of conviction ; while as to changed ap- 
plications of authority, most accept the release, but all 
resist the application of restraint where they were formerly 

free. 

Parties, as they relate to these efforts of support or 
defence, are called conservative and liberal. They are con- 
servative as they endeavor to maintain what is to their own 
advantage, and liberal as they endeavor to secure some 
fancied benefit by a change in the laws or in the political 
system. Liberal parties are, therefore, commonly the 
parties of the people ; but there is an apparent exception to 
this in some republics where the effort of encroachment is 
the other way, and where the democratic party is momen- 
tarily conservative in its endeavors to defend the liberty 

already gained. 

Apart from these relations, however, there is evidently 
in the nature of man a distinction ; there is a mind that is 
normally conservative, and another that is normally liberal. 
Commonly men who are liberals while penniless become 
firm conservatives if they make money ; and the old are 
conservatives naturally, holding by what is ; and the young, 
eager for the untried future, are the readiest aUies of every 



VAEIATIOXS DUE TO MODEEZS^ CIVILIZATION. 147 

liberal aspiration. It is not from a fancy, but from a fact, 
that we always liear — in conflicts against establislied 
power— of Young Italy, Young Germany, and Yonng 
Ireland ; and tlie observation made by l^eckar of the influ- 
ence of the young men in tlie French revolution is true for 
all similar cases. ^ But despite these points there is a liberal 
and a conservative brain to be distinguished without regard 
to age or social condition. Minds developed in the direction 
of the speculative faculties, that deal constantly with con- 
ceptions of the possible as apart from the actual, with acute 
moral convictions of social and political abuses, and the 
consequent philanthropic aspiration for the remedy of such 
abuses are necessarily impelled toward change, which is 
always called reform, and are therefore always on the 
liberal side of every division. On the contrary the mind 
that in common parlance is called the practical ; the mind 
of the class which in its extreme type denies the existence 
of whatever it cannot touch ; which urges that a bii^d in the 
hand is worth two in the bush ; this mind is in its very 
constitution averse to any changes but the most obviously 
necessary, and is conservative. '\Yith all allowance made 
for the difierence of youth and age, this mind, in a well- 
pronounced example, is, even in boyhood, but little 
adventurous ; and the other, even in old age, is visionary. 

Attributes that we may thus rather indicate than define 
are as distinctly characteristic of nations, on a grand scale, 
as of individuals on a small one ; and this variation in 
the types of humanity accounts for the differences of na- 
tional relation to the same great ideas and facts. In all 

* Les jeunes gens etaient devenus dominatis. Et jetcs dans lo monde 
avant d'avoir eu le temps d'eclairer leur jugement, ils crojaicnt pouvoir se 
ranger parmi les penseurs sans autre contingent qii'un petit nombre d'idees 
generales, de ces idees qui menent tl tout, et qui ne suffisent a, rien." 



148 MODEEN STATES. 

modern nations the aspiration for freedom is nearly tlie 
same ; yet liow variously the nations deal with this idea. 

Freedom in a state is like oxygen in the fire ; it is the 
necessary condition of great and vigorous activity. Con- 
trive yonr state so that the people are free, and your fire so 
that the air has abundant access and things roar with 
activity. Shut out the air or suppress freedom, and the 
processes are slow and the state and the fire alike smoulder. 
But the highly oxygenated fire must be so handled that it 
shall not burn down the house, or there is no advantage, 
and only the less visionary nations perceive how to exercise 
an equivalent control upon great freedom. 



CHAPTER II. 



ABSOLUTE MOXAECHY. 



I._janies tlie First of England said : ''As it is atheism 
and blasphemy in a creature to dispute what the deity may 
do, so it is presumption and sedition in a subject to dispute 
what a king may do in the height of his power. Grood 
Christians will be contented with God's will, revealed in his 
word, and good subjects wiU rest in the king's wiU revealed 
in his law." He who wrote thus extravagantly of authority 
ruled very tamely, even submissively ; and thus freshly 
illustrated that the strongest statement of a theory may be 
made when none dare attempt to put it in practice, or none 
but the incapable ; for this silly retailer of obsolete phrases 
was too wise to act on them himself, but by instructions of 
this sort he prepared his son's head for the executioner's 

axe. 

Absolute monarchy has been eiToneously defended, and 
has offended the world more through those errors than by 
its acts. Mistaken advocates thought it necessary to sus- 
tain it by the theory that it was not only a ijve but 
part and parcel of the divine government ; and they held 
this not merely in those ages when this was the best or only 
government, and when the general credulity was fitted to 
accept such doctrines ; but tliey stated their view more and 
more extremely, like the ruler just quoted, in proportion as 
the activity of inquiry and the growth of knowledge pre- 
pared the world to revolt against it. In the course of time. 



150 modee:^ states. 

as the political form remains and society changes, this 
government, like every other which persists heyond occa- 
sion, hecomes iniqnitons ; and as its iniquity is more fla- 
grant, the assertion of its divine authority becomes more 
extreme, and thus God is preached to the people as the 
direct author of the most palpable wrongs, and they are 
told that this is part of the inscrutable ways of providence. 
But they must either refuse to believe in God or in that sort 
of doctrine, and they reject the doctrine to become rebels 
rather than infidels, and often not merely rebels against 
extreme monarchy, but against all monarchy at one step ; 
for from the discovery of the falsehood of this defence of 
authority, they believe it has no other. 

But in its time it is as natural, legitimate, and indis- 
pensable as any other form, and an absolute monarch is 
one of the primary factors of every state. To derive 
authority from Adam is a laughable fancy ; but to rest its 
origin on the necessities of a people, and its continuance on 
the incapacity to discover — despite its evils — any effective 
way to do without it, is to give legitimate reasons for the 
existence of a form without which the world could have 
made no progress. 

Every history of this form involves two struggles : first 
a struggle that results in natural unity and the existence of 
the state under the government of an absolute and arbitrary 
sovereign ; for if the conflict between the parties to such a 
struggle terminates the other way, no state results, and 
there is consequently no monarchy. Next a struggle for the 
limitation of the power of this ruler, by which his authority 
is strengthened, as in Russia, if he prevails, or disappears 
in a constitutional monarchy, as in England, if he is beaten. 
Both struggles are, therefore, against authority. JSTeither is 
exclusively waged by any one element of the nation, but 



ABSOLUTE MONAECHT. 151 

the first is in the interest mainly of the nohles, the other 
mainly of the people. 

II.— Every modern monarchy grew out of the feudal 
system, which was an original organization of their con- 
quests Iby warlike races. Conquest was a necessary ele- 
ment in the establishment of the feudal monarchy ; and 
this form of sovereignty always arose, in fact, in the same 
cu'cumstances in which, as we have seen, the primary 
sovereignty commonly gained its first foothold ; that is, at ^ 
the expense of a vanquished people. Other common ele- 
ments in the feudal sovereignty were that the ruler was of 
German race, and led into his future kingdom conquering 
hordes of Germans, or of peoples descended from German 
conquerors. In this way, either directly or indirectly, 
Germany has given monarchs and an aristocracy to every 
European country. The Lombards, who founded in Italy, 
amid the ruins of the Roman system, the only monarchy 
that endured any time, were Germans from the hanks of 
the Elbe. That the Franks were Germans is, of course, 
familiar to all ; though it seems to be forgotten in France 
that the aristocracy, which gave splendor to the brilliant 
periods of French history, was of this odious race. Russia 
was organized into a monarchy by Scandinavians, whose 
German origin is not open to doubt ; and the Normans had 
the same general source as the Saxons and Danes who went 
to England before them ; as had also the founders of the 
Gothic monarchy in Spain. Thus England and Italy, 
Russia, France, and Spain, drew on the same apparently 
inexhaustible store for kings and nobles ; and in a succes- 
sion of ages fruitful in thrones, Germany was the only 
country in which no durable monarchy was founded— a 
fact obviously due to the circumstance that Germany was 
the only country not conquered in that age by a foreign 



152 modee:n" states., 

people, for tlie Hnns were merely like an innndation 
that spent its fury and disappeared. But in subse- 
quent times, when monarchies were formed in Germany, 
they were formed by the same process ; that is, by con- 
quest — the conquest of successive states by forces raised in 
one state, and the aggregation of the whole by military 
pressure. 

In the monarchies of Germany, even where the process 
of conquest had an important influence in their formation, 
another principle also operated. They were not so much 
the result of an increasing national unity as of the aggrandize- 
ment of a great family. In aU the great monarchies that 
have nationality behind them the unity continues, though 
the reigning family is displaced and another succeeds ; but 
the Austrian monarchy resulted from the aggrandizement 
of the Hapsburg family, and the Prussian is scarcely con- 
ceivable without the Hohenzollern. Perhaps the cause of 
this is that where there is nationality that very fact is the 
definition of the group, and the indication of the line that 
separates it from all the world ; but where several mon- 
archies arise amidst a people who are all of the same race, 
and have the same national traditions, the only point of 
unity of a section— its only anchor-hold in the tideway of 
events is its allegiance to a great family. In this is con- 
tinued, on a large scale, what was apparently an original 
characteristic of the German race, for it is the adherence to 
leadership that was described by Tacitus. 

It is a habit with English writers on politics to attribute 
their freedom and admirable institutions to their Teutonic 
origin. But there cannot be any great value in that theory, 
, since every existing government in Europe was equally 
founded by Teutonic elements, and since Germany itself, in 
the full play of Teutonic thought and impulse, has not at- 



AESOLUTE MOTTAECHY. 153 

tained these happy possessions. As Ibetween England and 
other countries there is this difference however : In France 
and Russia Germans conquered men of other race, and the 
popular element was, therefore, non-German. But England 
was conquered oftener than other countries. There was 
Teutonic hlood below as well as above ; and that below 
was less filtered by passage through other histories. 

III. — Into every one of the important countries of Europe 
the Germans went as they did into France, under a leader 
or duke who was elected by the tribe and was removable 
at its pleasure, who was the functionary of its will, and 
who acted without consulting the tribe assembly only 
in facts of little consequence. But in the conquered coun- 
try, and with regard especially to the conquered people, 
this leader became a king ; for in the will of the con- 
querors was the life or death of the vanquished ; the 
leader of those conquerors was the instrument of that will,, 
and the crushed people did not discriminate between what: 
was personal and what official in his character. This> 
apparently inconsistent relation persisted for a considerable- 
time in every instance. There was a people that was sub- 
ject to the will of the ruler, and a nobility that was not 
subject. This accounts for the fact that the first conflict is 
always with the nobles, while the monarch endeavors to 
strengthen the people for his support. Tempted by the 
possibilities of this situation, the sovereigns endeavored to 
assert over the free, armed, and resolute nobles— their com- 
rades in adventure — the same dominion they possessed 
over the conquered and disarmed people. They commonly 
became the victims of their own ambition ; and this is the 
explanation of the frequent expulsions and even execu- ! 
tions of kings in France ; for the nobles adhered tenaci- 
ously to that relation with the king, Iq virtue of which he 



154 MODEEIT STATES. 

was only tlie first of the nolbles. It was tMs double relation 
of tlie same ruler to tlie people as a king and to the nobles 
as a leader, which gave character to the political conflict in 
all the feudal times ; and on the issue of this conflict was 
determined the direction of national progress toward a strict 
and absolute rule of the sovereign, or toward such a change 
as reduced the nation to a mere congeries of principalities. 
National unity results from the triumph of the monarch in 
this conflict, and fails without it. 

IV. — It was therefore in this conflict of king and nobles 
that the absolute monarchies arose, and that the feudal 
lord paramount ceased to be the holder of an office and be- 
came a possessory sovereign. Every place of importance 
was in the feudal scheme held as an office, and that system 
decayed and perished because these places held as offices 
in consideration of the performance of public duty became 
permanent possessions, passed by hereditary right from 
father to son, became a property in the holder ; and so 
all the conception of the relation of the occupancy of these 
offices to the public service was lost, and the privileges, 
authority, dominion, given for the common advantage, were 
held for private beneflt. It is a natural tendency in the 
occupancy of any office whatever to abuse and pervert its 
authority and privilege to the private advantage of the oc- 
, cupant ; but the feudal system was mainly conceived in 
correction of the evils of property ; its primary idea is in 
direct opposition to the possession of any proi^erty what- 
ever by any person. In its theory the land and all that is 
in it is the property of the nation ; and the soldier who 
shattered the vase at Soissons only declared by that act the 
acknowledged truth that even the king had no right to 
appropriate to himself an atom of the spoil for the taking 
of which the lives of all had been ventured. Land was 



ABSOLUTE MOT^AECHY. 155 

held only to snpply means for the common defence ; and 
authority was given in all degrees, np to the highest, for no 
other reason whatever than the control of the nation to the 
same end. Although a man's son had a respected claim for 
his office and its honors, he had no right. His claim was 
Ibased on the faith of humanity in the superiority of the son 
of a superior man ; and he was thrust aside if he did not 
justify that faith by his acts ; or if, on the indulgence of 
society that gave him his opportunity, he endeavored to 
Ibase any presumption of right. Eight kings were thus dis- 
placed in France while the interest of the nobles kept the 
system vigorous, because they were unfit for the supreme 
office, or because they pretended that the sovereignty was 
not an office. They became early sacrifices to the endeavor 
to make a feudal office a personal property. Even so late 
as the time of Charles the Bald, " the nobles being very 
much displeased because the king conferred honors without 
their consent, agreed together against him and called a 
general council." 

It was a tendency, therefore, in full accord with human 
nature as opposed to political system; and a tendency 
which operated in fact to make the throne a permanent 
possession ; but the same tendency existed with regard to 
all other offices also. No man of ordinary impulses relin- 
quishes readily a post of honor or emolument, and a healthy 
society does not spontaneously displace from any important 
position the man who serves it well there ; because it does 
not fear his ambition, and does apprehend, because familiar 
with them, the perils due to the occupancy of an important 
post by an incapable man. Retained, therefore, from 
generation to generation, as the feuds were, calamities 
were required to displace the holders, and a general revolt \ 
to dispossess the holder of that highest feud, the throne. 



156 MODEEIT STATES. 

Installation, wMcTi was primarily the political recognition 
that the place was held by delegation, degenerated into a 
mere formality, and so passed out of existence as a vital 
fact ; and thus usage itself helped to make the possession 
permanent. 

It is to be noted, moreover, that such a tenure of sove- 
reignty as assumes that kingship is an ofBce is an exceed- 
ingly important qualification of royal authority. For the 
leader of predatory hordes such a qualification of his 
power is appropriate and necessary ; but when the horde 
holds a country permanently and forms a state, and is 
forced to fight its neighbors on various occasions, such a 
qualification of authority cripples the state, and on such 
occasions it is a normal tendency of authority to become 
more absolute. As therefore the feudal nations formed 
great states, this fact alone favored the transition from 
feudal supremacy to sovereignty in the Lord Paramount. 

Y.— But neither usage itself, which tended to make 
possession permanent, nor the operation of recognized 
political forces in favoring the growth of sovereignty could 
have produced arbitrary authority if facts had not neutral- 
ized in the state that force by which opjDOsition had been 
asserted from time to time, as occasion required, against the 
royal encroachments. This force was the nobility. 

It was the characteristic feature of all conflict in the 
feudal countries that the people were for several centuries 
scarcely a makeweight, and that the struggle against the 
royal authority was waged always by the nobles. In 
France this was so well recognized that the monarchs never 
conceived of revolt except as proceeding from the nobles. 
Common habit in this particular led to some great errors. 
Even so late as the time of Louis XYL, when the first 
murmurs of the revolution were heard, the noise was 



ABSOLUTE MONAECHT. 157 

thoiK^M to come from the same old source, and the monarch, 
in a spirit of politic craft, caUed the assemWy of the people 
to meet the discontent of the nohles, and then first saw the 
true source of his trouhle. 

In every case, therefore, in the early conflict— the first 
of the two noted previously as universal— the nohles con- 
tended for the limitation of the sovereign authority against 
all forces and tendencies that favored its growth. In that 
battle the monarchy attained or strengthened its existence 
by triumph over the nobles ; for if the barons eventuaUy 
conquered so far as to subordinate the prince completely to 
their mil, no great state arose. But the barons were nearly 
always piit down by force or craft. 

In France the nobility at first completely destroyed the 
vitality of the sovereign ofllce ; but the functions of which 
they deprived the king were given to the mayor of the 
palace-a sort of early prime minister-and before the 
nobles were fully aware of it, they found they had merely 
changed the location of the sovereign authority, and given 
to this officer, supposed to be then- creatui-e and to be harm- 
less, a power greater than any ever before possessed by 

the throne. 

He in turn used his opportunity, and made a compact 
with the nobles by which the country was simply bargained 
away between them. All the places, his and theirs alike, 
were held as offices before his time; but by this bargain, 
their occupancy was made perpetual and hereditary on the 
one hand, and the crown was made his personal property 

on the other. 

As eariy as the ninth century political collision was 
active in that countiy on vital points of organization ; and 
the nation was launched in that conflict, the chronicle of 
which fills the greater part of its history. Royal power 



158 MODEEIS- STATES. 

was then at its lowest point ; for the semi-barbarous con- 
dition which had opened to it greater possibilities when its 
position was nominally less assured, had in great degree 
been outgrown ; but the crystallization of society into 
political institutions had not yet made the progress in 
virtue of which they guarantee its supremacy, when those 
times have gone by in which the strongest rules, and the 
king is the strongest. 

All the minor centres of authority so outgrew their func- 
tion in the political organization that they dismembered the 
country rather than strengthened its unity. Princes were 
so nearly independent and so powerful that they were to 
one another rather like neighboring rulers than Hke related 
authorities of one realm. The King of Provence, the Dukes 
of Normandy, Aquitaine, Burgundy and Lorraine, the 
Counts of Anjou, Flanders, Paris, and Champagne, were 
substantially independent potentates, subject to a merely 
nominal sovereignty if to any. 

Vigorous reaction was a necessary consequence of the 
growth of an evil that made all parts common victims, and 
by the accession of Louis XL, the reaction had made great 
progress; but the growth of the royal authority had not 
been such as to deprive the great lords of the means to 
make their revolt effective and dangerous. In that reign 
was made the League for the public good — a compact of the 
princes to re-establish their ancient greatness at the expense 
of the growing authority of the crown by war or otherwise. 
Louis, upon the death of his father, was prepared to make 
almost any terms with any body, so that he might secure 
the succession. But he was supported by the Duke of 
Burgundy, and the possession of an ally of such impor- 
tance relieved the monarch of the necessity of making terms 
with many smaller princes, while the Duke of Burgundy 



ABSOLUTE MOKAECHY. 159 

tliiis strengtTiened the king's position from a confidence 
tliat his own power was so great as to be nnassailable. In 
1465, liow-ever, four years after Lonis XI. came to the 
throne, the Duke of Burgundy made with the Duke of 
Brittany that treaty which was the basis of the League for 
the public good, and the origin of those wars which ended 
in the total ruin and death of Charles the Bold of Bur- 
gundy and of his confederates, and in the establishment of 
a royal authority based not upon principles or treaties, but 
upon the fact that the king was stronger than all the lords 
together, w^hose power could possibly have been combined 
against him. It was a critical period in the history of the 
monarchy, and there was one moment when Louis thought 
of flight from the kingdom as his only resource ; but cun- 
ning, a talent for intrigue, and the absence of any sense of 
honor or regard for good faith, in the king himself, and that 
growth of society hitherto noted, enabled him ultimately to 
prevail. From the depression of the nobles which resulted 
from Louis' victory the great families did not recover till 
the anarchy of a century later; and the wars that resulted 
fi'om the ambition of the Guises made them a power greater 
than the feeble monarchs who followed one another through 
five reigns. Francis the First was the only monarch, down 
to his time, to whom the crown came in any real sense 
as a type of a national and administrative unity. Nobles 
and bourgeoisie were then in almost equal subjection to 
the sovereign; and executive authority, theoretically su- 
preme, was tempered in its assertions by adverse experi- 
ences. 

As that which is compelled to a constant struggle for 
its existence becomes equal to the condition, and grows 
stronger with strife, if the conflict is waged in favoring cir- 
cumstances, so the monarchy throve in France and com- 



160 MODEE]^ STATES. 

pletely put down its first great opponents, the nobles ; and 
in tlie day wlien the people rose against it, it perished for 
want of the support the great nobles would have given, if it 
had not so completely destroyed their force in the state. 
Eichelieu was the author of the policy that one hundred 
and fifty years later ruined his country. 

In England the feudal forces met in a different relation. 
In the observation of any human group it will be seen that 
with a general resemblance between them a man' s sons and 
daughters differ specially as his health, intelligence and 
vigor were different when they were begotten. In the life 
of nations this is seen also, and the various products of 
feudalism differ as they arose in its vigorous, its ill-defined, 
or its decrepit stages. The Norman feudalism was trans- 
planted in England at a time when it was in its best condi- 
tion, and had had the advantage of the experience of France 
for six hundred years. It happened also that the condi- 
tions in England were favorable to the exercise of a good 
influence on its growth. There the relations of the king 
and the nobles were less those of an open battle. As the 
adventure was later in time the nobles had grown some- 
what into the experience of sovereign authority, assented 
to its assertions, and did not compel its approaches to the 
people. Forced, moreover, to fight their way step by step 
against the conquered nation, monarch and nobles held 
together, and the nobles had at least as much apprehension 
of their neighbors, with good reason, as they had of the 
king. In every respect the elements in England were more 
nearly equal, and they kept an even balance, and passed 
in that condition through many generations, and it was not 
so much in the violence of constitutional strife as by the 
process of time and the growth of thought, that the sovereign 
authority in England attained at once vigor and mitigation. 



ABSOLUTE MOI^AECHT. 161 

It was modified surely and accurately Ibecaiise its modifica- 
tion was tlie legitimate result of the efiect of social forces 
upon political fabrics. 

Nobles and people always agreed against the extreme 
pretensions of the crown, but equally saw that if they went 
so far as to cripple it, they destroyed the power that might 
protect each from the other. 

In Eussia, alone of the feudal countries, the sovereign 
became absolutely supreme over all the forces that prevail 
against the monarch previously to the time when the people 
take part in the conflict, and in that country alone the 
people never became a political quantity; but while the 
sovereignty there escaped legitimate political limitation, it 
did not escape the limitation of palace intrigue peculiar to 
Oriental countries. 

But the victory and permanency of the monarchy in that 
country were due to facts peculiar to its history and not 
found elsewhere. By an apparently contradictory opera- 
tion of events, the starting point in the progress of the 
central authority to supremacy was in the almost absolute 
prostration of that authority. Minor sovereignties arose 
at many points, but there was no point at which the force 
of the nation could be gathered for effective war, and this, 
made possible the conquest of the country by the Tartars, 
who carried the standards of the Golden Horde to the 
Polish frontier. 

For a hundred and fifty years, or until the victory of 
Dmitry Donskoi in 1380, no national act or conclusion was 
of any value unless accepted and ratified by the Tartars ; 
and the condition of emancipation from the Tartar dominion 
became the growth of a central power strong enough or 
adroit enough, to overcome all the sources of internal divi- 
sion, and marshal the v/hole strength of the nation against 
11 



I 



IQ2 modeej^ states. 

tlie common enemy. It was the tendency, therefore, of all 
the facts and conditions of the nation's life to produce such 
a power, but it came much later than the victory named. 
It was produced when the Prince of Moscow (Czar of Mus- 
covy), having become greater by war and diplomacy than 
any other prince in the country, had formed a nucleus to 
which all the other princes were compeUed to adhere or 
perish. Safety for any prince lay in his recognizing more 
or less fuUy the supremacy of this central or grand prince. 
This formation of a national centre reached a practicable 
point in the time of Ivan the Great, who about 1480 as- 
sumed the title of Czar of Muscovy. 

In the presence of the Tartars all the princes recognized 
their powerlessness ; and there was thus an equality in 
submission, just as lords and boors alike are thrown to- the 
common level of humanity in presence of some great catas- 
trophe of nature. But from this the Tartars by their own 
act indicated a point of issue. They accepted the organiza- 
tion of the country, such as it was, for the convenience it 
afforded in securing their tribute, and while they received 
from the hand of the grand prince the yearly ransom of the 
nation, they also compeUed this nobleman to do homage to 
them for his position. From the fact that the oppressor 
thus regarded this prince as the head of the nation, the 
nation itself came to take the same view, and to lose sight 
of the comparative power of one or another opposing prince 
whose ambition tempted to the assertion of supremacy ; 
and thus it happened that when the Tartar power began to 
undergo a natural disintegration the grand prince was some- 
what established by extensive recognition as the necessary 
rallying point for that power by which then, if ever, the 
long dominant enemy was to be overcome. All the nation 
therefore that was under the influence of a patriotic im- 



ABSOLUTE MOiq'AECHY. 163 

pulse accepted this prince as its head ; and every element 
that patriotism did not control was compelled to the same 
end, either by the prince's relations with the Tartars, or Iby 
those he adroitly established with the Boyards. For the 
prince's relations with the Tartars had to the nation a 
material as well as a moral aspect. If there was any 
physical resistance of great nobles that the grand prince 
conld not control, he could call npon the Tartar power to 
come in at the point where his own strength fell short 
There were many nobles but little, if any, inferior to him 
in importance, and any two or three of these that could 
combine in a common resistance could at any time divide 
the nation against him ; but to these he could always pre- 
sent himself as the minister of the Tartar power, and this 
aspect was so real, that if any instalment of his tribute fell 
short, and he intimated to the Tartar Khan that this was 
because of revolt and resistance in the territories of one or 
another of the great lords, that signal let loose the Tartar 
horsemen, who swept the designated district like a storm of 
fire. By this relation of the grand prince to the enemy he 
wielded all their tremendous power as an external pressure, 
which enforced unity by the destruction of all elements that 
stood in its way. Furthermore, greater and lesser nobles 
were constantly in collision with the bands of Tartars near 
them, and events occurred which were always against the 
Russians, for if they obtained at any time a temporary ad- 
vantage, this only called in greater forces to assist the 
accidental aggressors. But against grievances of this sort 
there was redress, and tliis also was to be sought from the 
grand prince. His appeal to the Tartar Khan made at the 
time of paying the tribute was always heard ; but from 
every noble who went to Moscow with complaint against 
the Tartar plunderers the prince required an absolute 



IQ4: MODEEN STATES. 

recognition of Ms supremacy as the price of assistance. 
By these various means the Tartars co-operated with the 
prince in the production of the central power that was 
eventually to drive them out of the country ; and in the 
extensive wilderness that then lay between the various dis- 
tricts, it is scarcely possible that the great nobles could 
ever have been subdued by any lesser force than that the 
conquerors supplied. 

YI.— Religion and law were forces which equally gave 
a vigorous support to the throne in nearly all that period 
when its conflict was with the great nobles, perhaps from 
the instinctive perception of priests and lawyers that the 
crown was the organizing element in the growth of the state, 
and that in the direction of a more complete organization 
lay the greater safety of the ideas of moral and legal right 
which they respectively cultivated. 

Sovereigns were strengthened by the theory of divine 
right at that time when their swords had ceased to be all- 
sufficient. This theory prevailed in many centuries, and 
assumed its final form in the famous declaration of the 
University of Cambridge, that ^' Kings derived not their 
titles from the people, but from God ; that to Him only 
they are accountable ; that it belongs not to subjects either 
to create or censure, but to honor and obey their sovereign, 
who comes to be so by a fundamental hereditary right of 
succession, which no religion, no law, no fault or forfeiture 
can alter or diminish." In France it had been already de- 
clared that the ''Law of God ordains that subjects should 
submit themselves and be united to their sovereign as 
members to their head ; even though he should exceed his 
bounds and be a tyrant, provided there be no manifest sin 
in what they are commanded to obey." 

Both these declarations show that the point was in dis- 



ABSOLUTE MOISTAECHY. 165 

pute when they were made, Ibnt that the theory held its 
ground with resolute tenacity ; yet they were made eight 
hundred years after the alliance of the emperor and the 
pope had added religious sanction to the control of physical 
force. 

Christianity, which arose in the world as a protest 
against ecclesiastical machinery, was what might be called 
the equity of God. As in our common incapacity to frame 
the law so as to meet every case, equity saves those inno- 
cent ones whom the letter of the law would condemn, so in 
religion all those who would '' die by the law," which the 
priests and the churches had made in the ancient times, 
found a refuge in the Christian doctrines. These occupied 
such safe ground between the heathen peoples, who were 
then becoming of political importance, and the enlightened 
peoples, whose intellectual influence was still great, that 
Christianity became the dominant religion, and organized 
in its turn, on a grand scale, that same apparatus of hier- 
archy, tithes, and formalities, against which it had in its 
origin been a protest. Therefore this scheme of worship, 
like every other, had its strictly material or financial aspect, 
and it conceived property quite as intensely as it did truth. 
By its great organization it held the world morally in its 
hands, and its judgment for or against a cause was final in 
all the hovels and in the greater number of the palaces. 
Its declaration that the king had in any nation the same 
absolute right as God was enough for all men ; and the 
king could secure this declaration by a proper attention to 
the ecclesiastical hunger for dignities and revenues. By 
such a collusion between kings and popes, the kings sus- 
tained themselves for ages against the intellectual and 
moral assaults which tended to undermine their position, 
and the popes, for this fat jpurchase, betrayed in every 



166 MODEETT STATES. 

land, that justice and right whose sworn advocates they 

were. 

As a practical consequence of the relation of sovereigns 
to the church, the political system of Europe was a federal 
theocracy for about a thousand years. IS'o sovereign 
authority prevailed in any state unless it acted in accord- 
ance with the will of the ruler in Rome, until the time came 
when kings and people equally understood that it was 
to their common interest to reject that control. All the 
religious wars were rebellions against the theocracy ; and 
opposition to arbitrary power came to be identified with 
protestantism, through the endeavor to stigmatize political 
objections as mortal sins ; but the church was fatally hurt 
by those who thus made it a mere prop to irresponsible 
power. 

But the lawyers were almost as much a cause as the 
prelates, of the prevalence in the world of those theories 
which contemplated Rome as the source and centre of moral 
and political life. In all the countries of Western Europe 
the throne was directly strengthened by the study of the 
Roman law, and the theory of authority drawn thence by 
the lawyers and applied as occasion served. This tended 
to make every prince the smaller analogue of a Roman 
emperor, and to reduce to a common equality, with regard 
to him, the diverse elements of the feudal society. 

Roman writers themselves, Csesar and Tacitus, first com- 
pared the differences between the authority exercised in 
Gaul and at Rome, and the conceptions of authority pos- 
sessed by them as Romans, led them to look upon the 
Gallic and German systems — out of which grew the feudal 
system — as barbarous, and the legists eventually sustained 
the royal authority in the light of a similar prejudice. By 
the Roman law, the French lawyers measured every appli- 



ABSOLUTE MOT^AECHY. 167 

cation of anthority to the transactions of daily life, and so 
inevitably favored the growth of its power in that country. 
By these perversions of the lawyers, the princes themselves 
were tempted, and were drawn into those tendencies to ab- 
solutism, which ultimately brought about their ruin by 
forcing the development of limitations. 

By the countenance of the lawyers, therefore, and 
through the influence they exercised as a growing element 
in modern states, authority was carried to constantly 
greater extremes. But the assimilation of feudal sover- 
eignty to the absolute rule of a Roman prince, which made 
prerogative a right antecedent to every other right, was 
asserted most vociferously at a period when society tended to 
a condition which made that sort of authority progressively 
less tolerable. With sovereigns, borrowing the lumber of 
the law and the notions of another age to prop a rule that 
the growth of the people regularly undermines, calamity 
becomes inevitable. Through the growth of cities and of 
city populations, the lawyers acquired greater impor- 
tance in the state, and became the actual organizers of the 
administrative machinery of the monarchy. In the cities 
the operation of the Roman law was never completely lost ; 
but when the revival of this study spread from Italy, it was 
in the cities that it flourished, and there arose the only class 
of men in the land acquainted with a science that could 
justly be regarded as an application of reason to the regu- 
lation of human concerns. These men supplanted all others 
in the administration, so far as it was subject to the prince — 
pre-eminently in the fiscal and legal departments. Out of 
the royal council they created the parliaments, in which 
the Roman law became practically the law of the land. In 
the conceptions of these men, imbued with the spirit of the 
Roman law, a state consisted of a central power, in the 



168 MODERIT STATES. 

presence of wMcll all other conditions were legally equal, 
and their labors tended to reduce society to that simple 
structure. As they declared the law, the law became 
practically the creature of their application of theories de- 
rived from the Roman Empire. 

In France this was of more importance than in the other 
feudal countries, for there it became the basis not only of 
the legal, but of the financial scheme. Enguerrand de 
Marigny, superintendent to Philip the Fair, was the fore- 
runner of a fiscal system, in the growth of which the king 
was to become independent of those regular, or irregular, 
votes of money which would have made necessary in France 
the periodical gathering of the states-general, as in England 
^ they made necessary the frequent assembly of parliament. 
This was an exceedingly important step in the organization 
of sovereign authority. It assured to the nation some ex- 
emption from the royal calls upon its generosity, but it 
gave to the throne the same independence of restraint as of 
supplies. 

yil. — Every event, or fact indeed, that enabled the 
sovereign to dispense with the support of the nobles — which 
it was the assumption of the feudal relations that he could 
not do without — was a factor in the aggrandizement of the 
regal authority ; and events of this nature occurred in the 
difierent nations in different periods, for what the elabora- 
tion of a fiscal system did for France in one century, the 
discovery of gold in America did for Spain in another ; and 
the progress of those inventions which led to the growth of 
infantry did to these, and to aU others in turn, a somewhat 
similar service. 

In the feudal times the power to declare war did not 
exist in the same circumstances as now. In the conceptions 
of that system there never was any peace, and every part 



ABSOLUTE MOE-AECHY. 169 

of the political organization liad regard to war. There was 
always war, and the monarch, as commander, simply de- 
termined the movement of one or another expedition. If 
counsel was taken with any body, it was merely the king's 
deliberation with his treasure-keeper as to means, or with 
his soldier comrades as to the plan. It was never with the 
nation in any snch way as conld put in doubt the entire 
supremacy of the royal will as to the point. There was, to 
be sure, a practical limit that gave control over this to the 
nobles and the nation. He could only make war by their 
assistance. No theoretical limit exists where a practical 
one is all-sufficient ; and thus was presented the case which 
involved the fall and decay of all the feudal relations, and 
the survival of the most absolute point of the royal authority ; 
for the introduction of '^ royal armies," which the king 
could organize and use at his personal discretion, and the 
contrivances of systems of ''royal finance," together en- 
abled him to dispense entirely with that consent of the 
nobles and the nation, which were the only limitations 
upon his authority to put the very existence of the nation 
at stake in adventurous wars. 

Substantially the first royal army — that made in France 
— was identical in character with the infantry that tlie kings 
had drawn from the cities, but the essence of the chauge Avas 
that the cities were not called upon to raise and send their 
men, like feudatories ready equipped for service, but they 
were called upon for money, and the men were raised as the 
administration saw fit. On every town was laid a permanent 
tax, called a taille, and tliis was assented to by the towns, 
because the force it was to support was ostensibly for their 
protection, and thus the obvious utility of the contribution 
commanded respect. The nobility was even more greatly 
pleased with iK for it exempted that order from a great bur- 



170 MODEEIN- STATES. 

den. No nobles paid tlie taille, yet tlie organization of a regu- 
lar defence relieved them of that feudal service which they 
were under obligation to render in virtue of their lands and 
dignities. Some nobles even received pensions out of the 
taille, which gave it even further validity in their eyes. By 
the discharge of the nobility from the obligation of defend- 
ing the country, and even from contributing to that defence 
by their wealth, the train was laid for their ruin. 

With an organized military force at command, and with 
a permanent tax and a fiscal administration, government 
could be carried on indefinitely without calling upon the 
country ; for royalty needed no service from its feudal 
subordinates, and needed no votes of supplies, and these 
were ever the twin restraints in virtue of which it made 
terms with the people and the nobles. 

Eoyal authority was thus directly sustained by the new 
elements brought upon the stage by the advance of popular 
progress ; but these elements not only redressed the balance 
between nobility and royalty, they did not merely restore 
the crown to a position in which it could maintain itself 
against the nobles, but they produced that condition in 
virtue of which the municipalities and the nobles for ages 
neutralized respectively each other's efibrts for the limita- 
tion of the royal authority, and thus caused it to reach pro- 
portions not consistent with the rights or safety of either. 

They made that relation of the elements in virtue of 
which there could be no limitation of royal authority, until 
either nobles or people should become again supreme ; and 
thus assured that that authority should never be limited, 
until it had reached such a point that limitation could only 
be made effective by its destruction. 

It has been said that the change in armaments which 
made infantry supreme in battle was in favor of freedom, 



ABSOLUTE MONAECHT. 171 

and this was so where the people fought for themselves in 
their own cause ; but infantry, trained under the standards 
of arbitrary sovereigns, arrested for three hundred years 
the progress of the organization of the constitutional mon- 
archies. In the protest against the mutiny bill, it is said, 
"none are such apt and willing instruments to deprive 
others of their rights as when they are themselves de- 
prived ;" and this touches the precise point of the relations 
of armies to the people. In modern states the "royal 
army" was the analogue of the conquered people in the 
ancient states. From the conquered the commander drew 
that force of docile legions, by which he imposed his own 
will upon the conquerors themselves ; and a portion of the 
people trained to military discipline, without any aspiration 
but that of victory, is the most effective foe of freedom. 

YIII. — In the original conceptions of the feudal system 
there was no room or place for what is known to the modern 
world as the "people." From great nobles to lesser nobles 
the connection of subordination was continuous, down to the 
armed retainers of each, and to those who labored in the 
fields — and they were slaves. But in France this system 
found itself confronted with numerous flourishing cities — 
the relics of the Roman age; and these were not readily 
taken up or assimilated by the feudal organization. In the 
feudal life there was no need for cities ; for a fruitful coun- 
try could supply all the wants that men then knew. Every 
chateau was a settlement, and in its dependent elements 
had the means to minister to all its needs. As the nobles 
cut the country up into great rural domains, therefore the 
cities became more and more the refuges of the original 
inhabitants ; but they were divided also as the spoil of the 
feudal lord. 

In these centres of a rude and hostile population accus- 



172 MODEE]^ STATES. 

tomed to the Eoman municipal liberty, there were frequent 
revolts ; and as there was no other means of repression 
known to the administration of that time than the massacre 
of the offenders, this did not keep down the next genera- 
tion, and revolt was a regular recurrence. When the people 
of a commune arose and massacred the feudal lord and his 
retainers, they apprehended the vengeance of his family as 
a matter of course, and endeavored to secure themselves 
against it. This they did by giving their allegiance to some 
lord known as his enemy ; and tliis transfer of allegiance 
was a common consequence of revolt. Eventually this 
turned to the benefit of the crown, for the king was found 
to be the strongest point of support against the local lord, 
and a common centre of resistance to local oppression. The 
population thus acquired the habit of regarding the crown 
as the source of safety and justice, and thus arose the 
movement through which the king began to have ^'sub- 
jects," as apart from the distributions of the feudal system. 
By the struggle begun by Louis the Fat in 1100, this 
conflict seemed to indicate the new conditions in which 
royalty was to issue from its previous relation to the nobles. 
His conflict was not with the great nobles of the nation at 
large, but with those of his own domain, and shows the 
distinction of the greater and lesser nobility, which is a 
continuous one in the history ; and it was in support of the 
monks and the people, to protect the former in then- religious 
houses, and the latter in the pursuit of their occupations. 
One of the measures of Charlemagne, which endured and 
became important in the history of the crown, was his asso- 
ciation of the royal authority with the machinery of the 
Cliristian hierarchy, in virtue of which, resistance, otherwise 
only a political fact, was to become a heinous offence— a 
sin— as an opposition to powers presumably established by 



ABSOLUTE MOl^^AECHT. 173 

the divine will; and the struggle maintained by Louis 
three hundred years later, as the champion of the church, 
though on a small scale, was destined to spread to every 
part of the nation where this interest needed a champion. 
But this conflict also involved a recognition of the people of 
Louis' dominions, as a class to be protected from the nobles 
by the crown. Royalty, therefore, already rested, in its 
conflict with the feudal nobles, on those powers which were 
to give it an ultimate and efficient support and eventual 
victory. As yet, however, it was only a quarrel as to facts 
within the crown domain ; but it extended in the same form 
to the whole realm. For the throne and the great feuda- 
tories were normally hostile powers; and when the king 
had become known as the champion, in his own dominions, 
of the people and of the church, his quarrel with opposing 
feudal lords had already gained great strength. 

Out of this relation of the cities to the crown arose that 
class, neither noble nor servile, known as the bourgeoisie, 
or city people ; for, from the fact that every city, in its con- 
flicts with its feudal lord, sooner or later attached itself to 
the crown, this association of cities to the crown was event- 
ually contemplated as a matter of course ; and thus the 
word bourgeois, which signified at first only an inhabitant 
of a '^bourg," or city, came secondarily to mean a subject 
of the crown. In the course of time the wbrd lost its rela- 
tion to its first import, and did not imply any reference to 
residence in a city, but designated simply a person who, 
wherever he dwelt, owed of right no allegiance or fealty to 
any feudal lord, but was a subject directly of the king. 
Originally, this political status, possessed only by the inhabi- 
tant of a city, went with him in his journeys, and was in 
some degree a protection. It was claimed by him with 
great tenacity if he ceased to dwell in a city, and acquired 



174 MODEEN STATES. 

estates, even witliin the supposed limits of the jurisidicton of 
some feudal lord, and was successfully or unsuccessfully 
claimed, as the royal power, or that of the local noble, 
happened at the time to be more effective. Moreover the 
safety of this shadow of the royal name was sought by 
every commune, every little hamlet or group of houses 
that could be called a village ; and this claim, this effort 
toward a new relationship with authority, or toward the 
revival of an older one, gave direction to the current of 
men' s thoughts with regard to authority. 

Side by side with the feudal organization of society were 
thus laid the foundations of another and different form of 
the relation of the people to power, which grew out of the 
ideas the Romans had left, and became the modern political 
system. By this the cities became analogues of the great 
feuds. Each commune held its charter as each great feuda- 
tory held his feud ; but the feudal subordinate relations 
were absolute, military, barbarous, and equally strict in 
their gradations from the lord down to the slave. In that 
conception of society there was no room in the world for 
any human creature, save on one or another of these grada- 
tions. But in the cities the rights of each one was guaran- 
teed by the same charter that guaranteed the safety of all. 
There was a kind of equ^ality, and a taste of freedom. From 
the slavery, the oppression, the robbery of the feudal 
domain to the comparative freedom, justice, and equality 
of the city, the change was very great ; and the cities grew 
by the accretion of every individual who possessed the will, 
or the capacity, to make himself superior, wherever a law 
guaranteed the safety of his acquisitions. Circumstances 
therefore favored the growth of the modern system, and 
narrowed the area of the other. 

Before the cities thus rose to consequence, the state had 



ABSOLUTE MO]S"AECHY. 175 

"become a mere gathering of local nobles, under whose hands 
royalty seemed likely to disappear altogether ; Ibnt a great 
change came now, for while the king' s name was a support 
and a rallying point for the people — a moral stronghold — 
the armed bands of the cities supplied that infantry which 
now began to modify in France, as it had already done in 
some other countries, the entire aspect and character of war, 
and to make battles something more than collisions of a few 
hundred iron-clad cavalry -men. 

In the different countries this conflict was sustained with 
variable intensity, as the character of the people was differ- 
ent, and as there were or were not cities ; for although all 
these kings of German origin had the same ambition, and 
though all the armed comrades of the predatory expedition 
insisted with the same vigor on their privileges, and repelled 
with desperate resolution all attempts to subordinate them 
to the will of one of their number, yet the people in the 
various countries were not of the same races, and furnished, 
in the several cases, an unequal support to the royal preten- 
sions. 

In Eussia there were a few ancient cities, and these were 
periodically razed in each early conflict. In Germany, in 
the feudal days, as in the time of Tacitus, there were no 
great cities, for tribe life is ahvays rural. There a ruler, as 
the head of a nation, never reached that point in the conflict 
with the nobles at which he must depend upon the people. 
In France it was otherwise, for there there were great and 
flourishing cities under the Eomans, and feudalism forced 
the growth of tliese centres of popular life. They eventually 
turned the tide in the ruler's favor. In Italy the cities went 
to a development so extreme that the whole political fabric 
dissolved in democracies, and so became a mere booty for 
foreign conquerors. 



176 MODERE" STATES. 

IX.— In Ms first appearance, therefore, the absolute 
monarch is only a leader of predatory companions ; then 
the ruler in their name of a conquered people ; then the 
ruler of this people without regard to his comrades ; then 
he endeavors to rule his comrades as he does the conquered. 
If successful in this, all is contemplated practically as a 
personal property. Soldiers are not mustered and sup- 
ported to defend the country, or for a national purpose, 
but to sustain the king' s quarrel in some dynastic war ; 
courts do not come together to interpret the law, but to 
formulate the royal will ; parliaments are not assembled to 
consider the general welfare, but to further some personal 
purpose of the ruler. And in this spirit, all is done for the 
king's wiU and interest ; for the king's family, the king's 
friends, the king's paramours, the king's favorite. 

But societies change by growth, and kings either do not 
change, or they change only to put their faces the wrong 
way. Society grew toward that condition which required 
that he who had obtained place as a commander should 
become a magistrate. They who were soldiers had become 
citizens, and the difference in the functions of control was 
neither perceived by the sovereigns nor taught by their 
mentors. It is not merely that nations grow and kings 
stand stiU. They move in contrary directions. Every de- 
positary of power endeavors to increase his power and per- 
vert it to personal purposes, and becomes narrower as the 
spirit of the nation grows ampler and grander. 

But while the increase of knowledge, the growth of 
the popular element, and the abuse of authority, tended 
steadily to sap the foundations of the absolute monarchy, 
certain great facts in the life of every state sustained it. 
War and the war-making power was one of these ; the ad- 
ministration of justice was another ; and the relation of the 



ABSOLUTE MONAECHY. 177 

king to the cliurcli another. In these we see the royal 
power maintaining itself by those very points of relation to 
authority, into which it was separated by the first divisions 
made of the kingly office— the divisions of Judge, Com- 
mander and High Priest. 

From the holder of an office, therefore, the king has be- 
come the permanent possessor of its dignities ; and from a 
comrade but little superior to many others, he has advanced 
to a position of recognized and overwhelming superiority. 
But in all this the nation, in so far as it has been conscious 
of the process, has seen only its own purposes and advan-. 
tages. Sometimes the step in advance has seemed to the 
people the means to sustain some victory they have won 
from the nobles ; sometimes it has appeared to the nobles 
in an analogous light mth regard to the people, and very 
commonly it has seemed to all a necessity of the national 
cause against a foreign foe. In the person of the king 
what the nation most sees is its own unity. He is not 
merely the executive of the general will, but the only instru- 
ment of the national capacity to act with one plan for one 
purpose. How seriously and earnestly the early societies 
only conceived of the nation as a unity in the person of the 
king, is exhibited in the story of the Swedish king who was 
put on the altar and sacrificed to the gods as the solemn 
expiation of the nation's sins — used, in fact, as Abraham 
was ready to use Isaac. In such a solemn, serious, simple 
conviction that the king was only the point of concentration 
for all that was national, that he was the instrument of the 
common will, it was impossible that he could be opposed 
in the state ; and even his vagaries were contemx)lated as 
are often those of a spoiled child. 

Irresponsible and extreme authority, arbitrary and arro- 
gant, was directly cultivated by such relations; and it 



178 MODEEl!^" STATES. 

grew the more readily, Ibecanse its culture fell upon a time 
wlien the chief function of government was restraint as to 
all within, and the direction of force against all without ; 
when deliberation was little called for, because the point 
was seldom doubtful what should be done, but only who 
could do it with most vigor and effect. The simplicity of 
life and the customary law left no room for the function 
of congresses and parliaments. Circumstances, therefore, 
favored a view of authority, taken from the king's stand- 
point, altogether at variance with the view of the nation ; for 
as the nation conceives the king as made for its purposes, 
the king begins to conceive the nation as made for his. As 
he executes a will that is supposititiously that of the whole 
society, he favors that shade or aspect of the common pur- 
pose, which he conceives most energetically, because it is 
nearest his own sympathy, and it is but a short step from 
this to confound his own will with that of the nation, and 
to substitute one for the other. As the king grows more 
and more in the habit of regarding the nation as his own 
estate, and himself not as the steward but as the owner, he 
comes into open conflict with those who conceive the rela- 
tions most clearly the other way ; but this does not for a 
great while attract the attention of the whole nation, because 
there has never been a time when, to give effect to the 
general will, it was not necessary to exercise restraint upon 
some individuals, and this restraint gave rise to clamor; 
and the clamor, now more justly made, is, by the nation at 
large, confounded with the other ; and an alarm is not taken 
until some encroachment is made that does not merely 
oppress a few individuals, but is felt and seen by all, and 
then it is suddenly discovered that the royal view of power 
is flagrantly in conflict with the view always held by the 
nation. Here arises, therefore, a moral conflict between the 



ABSOLUTE MOKAECHT. 179 

actual authority and the national thought, which no longer 
assents to that exercise of authority, l3nt conceives inces- 
santly the return to the natural condition. 

There consequently arises a divergency between the 
views taken by the king and by the nation of their respec- 
tive relations ; an irreconcilable discrepancy that involves 
civU war; for the king, supported by all who hope for 
advantage in his favor, finds an army ; and the nation 
equally finds one in all who are ready to assert its cause, 
and all who hope to profit by the king's downfall. If the 
conditions of the war — ^the internal or external facts of na- 
tional existence — favor the monarch, authority is strength- 
ened and becomes still more extreme ; or, on the other 
hand, limitation of his authority is made efiective. 

Out of the conflict that thus ensues between the monarch 
and the nation comes usually the limited or constitutional 
monarchy. Limitation is fought resolutely and resisted 
successfully in many wars and through many centuries ; 
but the extremest type of absolute monarchy is overcome 
early, though the pretence is kept up with unflinching 
tenacity. So early as the time when the great nobles choose 
"between usurpers and pretenders," authority is no longer 
strictly absolute, for the barons make terms with those 
whom they assist. And, in fact, as soon as there is a law 
that is not the mere will of the ruler, as soon as parliaments 
or courts come into existence, authority is limited to the 
extent of their function. 

Sometimes, however, the despotic power overcomes in 
succession every one of the endeavors made by the nation 
to limit it, as the facts of the national existence favor it ; 
and as it persists and maintains itself to a comparatively late 
period in history, the appliances of modern civilization seem 
to assist its continuance and development. 



180 MODEEIS" STATES. 

But the Ibarons, or the popular element, or the individual 
ruler, will prevail in this conflict, as each has a happier re- 
lation than the others with the elements of force that can he 
brought into operation ; for every government is simply a 
method of applying the will of the strongest to the control 
of all. 



CHAPTER III. 

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY. 

I. — Constitutional Monaechy is the form that results 
from the endeavor to give to a people all those guarantees 
and advantages in government that are related to advanced 
conceptions of political organization without open aban- 
donment and rejection of the ancient system, and is a scheme 
especially related to the nature and character of nations 
that are super stitiously conservative, and yet too clear- 
sighted not to act upon intelligent observation of the facts 
that affect thek daily life. It treasures an individual of a 
designated family as an indispensable condition of the 
existence of a political fabric, yet cuts off his head if he 
happens to act upon the national assumption that he is 
really indispensable. 

Inconsistencies like this are found at every point where 
its theory is plainly apparent through the cloud of facts, 
and they present it in its true light, as a government whose 
essential quality is that it holds the old and new face to 
face in constant regulated and recognized conflict; and 
without prejudice, prefers the most ancient conception, or 
the upstart theory of yesterday, as either, in the vital com- 
petitions of actual politics, is found best fitted to the require- 
ments of a given occasion. 

Opposed to the regal government there is, in the growth 
of society a constant formation of points of subordinate 
authority — local elements of resistance to the regal will, 



182 MODEEN STATES. 

wliicli assert tlieir vitality in ways inconsistent with the 
supremacy of the central domination. These form in the 
church, which claims that its jurisdiction, as a spiritual 
power, is co-ordinate with the kingly authority in certain 
aspects, apart from and superior to it in otliers; in the 
order of nobles, the officers of the army, upon whom disci- 
pline at best sits lightly, where every one asserts as a right 
whatever opinion of his own he believes he can sustain with 
his sword ; in the moneyed or commercial classes, who 
rejoice in the absolute rule which gives safety to their prop- 
erty against predatory neighbors, but who are tlie first to 
find the rule burdensome, when it affords an uncertain pro- 
tection at the price of such exactions that the robber is no 
longer feared ; or in the apparatus of the law, where, 
though the lawyers and the judges sympathize with author- 
ity as the source of their function, a theatre is given to ad- 
vocates who rally a wide range of public thought in their 
denunciations of injustice, and where juries by their verdicts 
give force to the equities of popular opinion. 

Against these various elements of revolt the regal govern- 
ment is sustained by its adaptation to the occasions, by the 
support it derives from the assent of the main body of the 
nation, or from the failure of the diverse interests to inspire 
a common purpose. Divided revolt is less effective than 
an authority that is only a little stronger than each element 
of opposition taken separately ; but ages pass in the history 
of every government before the elements of revolt reach 
such a proportion to the sovereign authority. As the world 
becomes enlightened, however, as intelligence spreads, 
the main points of resistance acquire force, and new ones 
constantly arise, and the balance of power turns against the 
sovereignty. Civil war always comes at one point or another 
in this dispute, and commonly it comes many times in the 



COI^STITUTIOITAL MOJS^AECHY. 183 

story ; its frequency being in proportion, first, to tlie rapidity 
of tlie intellectual, and, therefore, the political growth of the 
people ; and next, to the temper of the nation— for the colder 
and more resolute peoples do not relinquish a struggle 
without the conquest of results secured by tangible facts, 
and they thus make themselves safe for centuries ; while 
the people of fervid nature, given to enthusiasm and 
generous sentiments, either tire out soon, or too readily 
accept delusive promises, and so are compelled to fight 
again ere they have forgotten the horrors of a previous 

struggle. 

Conflicts between the primitive condition, accurately 
represented by royalty in proportion as it is absolute, and 
the administrative system toward which society tends with 
the greater impulse as its growth is vigorous, are waged in 
parliaments, in the nation, and on the battlefield ; by the 
monarch, sustained by such a portion of the nation as is 
bribed or deluded, or has a personal interest in the royal 
fortunes ; and, on the other hand, by such of the nation as 
stands honestly in support of the national cause. Convic- 
tion, enthusiasm, fanaticism, are found on both sides, as 
early education gives men the intellectual atmosphere 
through which they respectively view the same facts from 
different standpoints. K royalty is effectually overpowered 
in some definite conflict, so that it only persists as the organ 
of the national will, the nation maintains for ages a tranquil 
and vigorous existence, as in England ; but if, as in France, 
royalty is so supported by many class interests that, through 
the conflicts of successive generations, it either overpowers 
every demonstration against it, or by delusive terms de- 
frauds the triumphant people of the results of their victory, 
peace and prosperity do not follow ; for the operation of 
inimical principles continues like a hidden fire, and some 



184 MODEEIS" STATES. 

day a terrible explosion like the Frencli revolution lays the 
whole fahric in ruin. 

II.— Every conflict by which royalty is thus challenged, 
from time to time, to try its might with the growing forces 
of the nation, ends either by such practical demonstrations 
of strength on one side or the other, that the pretension in 
which the struggle immediately arose is abandoned as hope- 
less, and that result affords a permanent guarantee against 
the revival of the pretension ; or the conflict ends by the 
admission or rejection of the pretence upon specified condi- 
tions. Those ''conditions" are of the stuff out of which 
constitutions are made ; for a constitution is the record of 
the limitations which a nation has placed to the exercise of 
an original executive authority, whose will was the only 
rule of action. That part of the nation, whether it be the 
barons, the priests, or the citizens, which is potent enough 
to rally a force that can dispute supremacy for the moment 
with the monarch, compels him to choose between a final 
conflict, in which he may lose the throne itself, or the 
abatement of some point of his authority, the exercise of 
which frets the interests of these vigorous elements. He 
must join in a death grapple, or pledge himself to hold the 
throne on the conditions they propose. This is the com- 
pact with princes. 

"Compact" is a word that has greatly troubled some 
rather finical philosophers. They have argued, with many 
pretty quibbles, that states cannot be based upon compact, 
because this would imply that men had agreed to make a 
state before there was a state ; an argument which indi- 
cates that their conception is that, in some remote time 
when states were made, they were made all at once 
and forever; that there had been nothing before them, 
and that change in the frame or fabric of states, when 



COI^STITUTIO^AL MOIS-AECHY. 185 

once they are made, is beyond tlie possilbilities of linman 
history. 

'No iDeliever in compact has, however, ever pretended 
that the idea of a state preceded the existence of one as a 
fact. States resulted from acts done without any concep- 
tion of the political fabric as an ultimate consequence. 
Such a conception as that of the practical advantage to all 
of the most rudimentary political fabric could only have 
succeeded to experience. It is contrary to the operations 
of the intellect, and hence to possibility, for men to deal 
with abstractions before they have known the facts from 
which the abstractions arise. There cannot be any vapor 
without substances to be vaporized. They hold an unas- 
sailable position, therefore, who deny the so-called "theory 
of compact;" but this theory is the creature of their own 
imaginations. Compact as described by intelligent ob- 
servers of its operation is quite another sort of thing. Some 
of the dreamers of the eighteenth century may have argued 
that man, as a gibbering savage, made a compact to become 
civilized and create a state ; but writers like Locke dis- 
course of compact as observed in the history of nations,, 
that is, as an evident political fact. He would be a strange 
reasoner, who should deny that Magna Charta was a com- 
pact with King John, in virtue of which he held the throne,, 
and without which his exclusion was certain. Compact 
with the sovereign is the fact that all resistance to royal 
authority aims to secure, and in proportion as a sovereign,, 
otherwise absolute, agrees to rule in a particular way, or 
does, without specific agreement, rule in accordance with the 
recognized requirements of those wlio can control him, and 
upon systems originating in such requirements, in such 
proportion he accepts a compact with all the powers and 
influences that he fears to offend by departure from the'^ 



186 MODEEIT STATES. 

tradition or system, and in such proportion is, of course, 
not absolute ; while, if a limited or constitutional sovereign, 
like James the Second in England, or Charles the Tenth in 
France, endeavors to put his will above the system, tradi- 
tion, or law, he simply attempts to repudiate a compact ; 
and those with whom it was made rise in its assertion and 
drive him from the throne. This is the fact, and this is the 
theory of revolt of that nature. 

Compact, therefore, either with nobles, or priests, or 
soldiers, or with the people, is the basis of every modern 
throne ; and has been, in variable proportion, potent from 
the time when the regal authority first lost that absolute 
sway which put the single will of the ruler above all other 
facts or powers in the nation. If a king can, by his genius 
and military capacity, make his own will supreme, and 
keep all others down, he is truly absolute, and there is no 
compact ; but if he has to make terms with even a single 
person, or with several persons, or with any power, or any 
organized bodies of the state, there compact begins, and it 
ranges from a mere oath between two confederates up to 
the acceptance of a digested constitution, which is an oath 
between one and all the rest. Darius was one of ten who 
seized the great Median empire. By a compact with the 
other nine he became sovereign. Hugh Capet, uncertain 
of the crown he had appropriated, was content to hold it 
on a compact made with the nobles, by which they and he 
divided the country between them, like the plunder of so 
many thieves. Louis the Eighteenth was glad enough to 
get the French throne by signing that compact called the 
Charter, which was the will of the greater part of the 
nation, but he was enough like his ancestors to try to cheat 
the people out of their share of the advantage, like any 
vulgar card sharper. 



co:n'stitutio]S'al monaecht.' 187 

The English l^arons, in arms at Runnymede, were then 
the sovereign authority in the land, and the king treated 
with them as such, and accepted the throne from them on 
that compact, the terms of which are in Magna Charta. In 
the ceremonies, hy which the kings of Arragon were raised 
to the throne, this formula was used: ''We, who are your 
equals in quality, and your superiors in power, make you 
king on these conditions," and the conditions referred to 
were found written in the laws of Arragon. 

Compact is, therefore, the true ground of the relation of 
modern kings with modern people ; and the terms of the 
compact are the conditions on which one shall rule, and the 
rest obey. It deals with all the spheres of authority, and 
restrains it, first as to one point, then as to another, and 
finally as to all, and these conditions, grouped together, 
constitute the public law. Limitation, in all cases, takes 
hold first upon the powers that royalty most abuses, and 
limits the king's authority in one country in favor of prop- 
erty, in another in favor of ecclesiastical claims, in another 
in favor of the freedom of individuals and an administration 
of justice apart from royal ingerence ; and from these great 
cardinal points moves progressively to minor details. 

In further stages of agreement against the royal author- 
ity, these conquests are guaranteed by yet more important 
compacts, in virtue of which the king gives up, as hostages, 
all the great functions of the sovereign office, to be filled by 
men whom the people shall associate with him as cabinet 
officers, so-called. 

III.— Parliaments are the agencies of the modern spirit. 
All the magistracies are responsible, in a ministerial se- 
quence, from lowest to highest ; and the highest, which is 
the executive, is responsible to the nation, represented in 
parliament. This is the ideal operation ; and, if the prac- 



188 MODEEN STATES. 

tice accords reasonablj with tliis theory, the system is safe. 
Parliaments are the products of unconscious political im- 
pulses. Though spoken of above as the peculiar agencies 
of the modern spirit, this is only in their full development as 
the centre of the national vitality, from which every act 
starts, and to which all impressions converge. In its more 
rudimentary condition this institution is found with every 
people in every age, and at points so isolated that the con- 
veyance of the idea by tradition seems impossible. Every 
savage ruler, even, has a council of the people, that either 
assists him with advice, controls and limits his extravagance, 
is the more immediate instrument of his will, or destroys 
him if his will is inimical to the nation. Parliament in 
England was at first no more ; for, in its origin, this great 
court of the nation was the royal court of the feudal system. 
In France the parliamentary machinery had a higher 
source. Originally, that aggregate national voice in France, 
out of which the states-general grew, was the assembly of 
the tribe common to every primitive people, maintained or 
destroyed in proportion as a people retained its earliest con- 
ceptions of human relations, or lost them in the compul- 
sions of conquest. Brought from Germany in the first 
advent of the semi-savage warriors, it survived as a German 
custom, with characteristic modifications, through the time 
of the first and second race of kings. It was not a convo- 
cation of certain orders merely, but a real assembly of the 
nation, made up of the clergy, the nobles and portions of 
the people ; and in certain designated instances, the portions 
of the people present were there as the chosen representa- 
tives of larger portions. By the body thus constituted, 
kings were deposed or elected ; laws were made, and the 
general welfare of the realm and the nation were considered ; 
and in the flourishing day of this system it was recognized 



CONSTITTJTIOI^AL MOIS'AECHY. 189 

that the monarch promulgated, as law, only what had there- 
in received the assent of the people. But this institution 
fell into decay within the century that succeeded the death 
of Charlemagne, in the period of the first reaction of the 
Gallo-Roman elements of the nationality against the Ger- 
man conquest. It may have been under the influence of 
the physical difficulties of distance and locomotion that the 
whole body of warriors first ceased to take part in the 
gathering ; hut it was under the influence of the feudal 
ideas of superiority that the institution was restricted to the 
character it possessed in the succeeding three centuries. It 
next appears, with some recovered vitality, as a gathering 
of the nobility and the clergy, who were the body of the 
nation, and met to review the concerns of a state, in which 
only themselves had rights. In this condition it is scarcely 
possible to make the distinction between it and the cour 
'pleniere^ convoked by the monarch for occasions of pomp, 
or in times when some general danger threatened the realm, 
or some common impulse demanded a greater than ordi- 
nary aggregation of its force. In the period of the German 
migration, in the time of completed conquest, in the age of 
reaction against the conquest, and in the time of the settle- 
ment and consolidation of the feudal relations — in every 
one of these periods there is a body that answers to the 
assembly of the nation in the general outline, and sufficiently 
keeps up the connection between its first and last form ; but 
in each period there are characteristic modifications that 
reflect the feature and spirit of the age. 

But when the municipalities, as directly subject to the 
sovereign, became of consequence in the state ; and when 
the right that was acquired in virtue of relation to these 
municipalities became personal, and went with a man away 
from the cities, another class had already grown that was 



190 MODERN STATES. 

not related to either nolbles, or clergy, nor in anj way sub- 
ject to them. Cities then began to hold, in the feudal 
organization, a position analogous to that of the feuds and 
the chateaux, and, like these, were called upon to send 
representatives to the assembly of the nation, and these 
representatives were neither nobles nor clergy, but men of 
the bourgeoisie. JSTo objection to the admission of such 
persons was made by the other classes. Though in our 
time, and with our knowledge of the effects of representa- 
tion, this may seem strange, it will lose that aspect if we 
reflect that then the appearance of the representatives of any 
body of the inhabitants was not regarded in the light of an 
acknowledgment of their consequence politically, but was 
exclusively contemplated as making them accessible to the 
power that imposed taxes. In confirmation of this view it 
may be noted that the third order was not eager in regard 
to its position, and mistrusted an importance, whose most 
obvious result was the account it was called upon to give 
of its wealth ; and it was from an impression like this, of 
its relation to the states-general, that it would, from time to 
time, have permitted the lapse of its right to appear there. 
It is in the reign of Philip the Fair that representation of 
the bourgeoisie is clearly observed for the first time as a 
fully recognized fact ; but there are many evidences that 
the bourgeoisie were present at a much earlier date. In 
April, 1303, the clergy, nobility, and bourgeoisie were con- 
voked by Philip to sustain him in his conflict with Pope 
Boniface. From the record of the names of those of the tiers 
etat, it appears that their relations to the cities was rather 
nominal than absolute and exclusive, and that they came 
from the little hamlets and villages, and from the people of 
the kingdom at large. It is called by cotemporaries, ''the 
Estate of the Common People," or "the Commons." It 



COITSTITUTIOjS'AL MOIS-AECHY. 191 

was, in short, The People, as properly so-called, apart from 
the priesthood and the nobility. 

It was in this class of the city people that law and ad- 
ministrative science were studied ; and when the conduct of 
the king's afiairs was brought officially under their obser- 
vation by their presence in the states-general, they could 
but be inspired with revolutionary impulses, by the contrast 
which the universal disorder of the royal administration 
presented with all their conceptions on the subject. As a 
fact, every assembly of the states-general in which the 
tiers etat was present in force, was animated by a revolu- 
tionary spirit, which may be due to the circumstance that 
the assembly was only convoked in those great crises, when, 
from the nature of the case, revolution was imminent. As 
an example of the character of their proceedings, the his- 
tory of the assemblies due to the calamity at Poitiers, and 
which met in 1355 and 1356, may be taken. The decrees of 
the first were acknowledged by a royal ordonnance, as hav- 
ing the force of law. It abolished all rights of requisition 
thitherto exercised in the name of the royal authority ; for- 
bade the condemnation of any person save by the regularly 
established processes of justice ; established a national 
armed force by commanding every person to arm himself 
according to his condition ; directed the administration of 
the finances by its own agents ; assessed taxes equitably 
upon all classes ; even divided the executive power with 
royalty by a sort of "permanent commission" of nine, and 
fixed the day when it should again meet. Here is a system 
that seems based on modern ideas of parliamentary control, 
and whose features indicate a knowledge of the adminis- 
trative methods by which the abuses of power can be over- 
come ; a knowledge that was certainly not contributed by 
the fat abbots or the feudal barons. 



192 MODEEN STATES. 

In the assemlbly of 1356 it was necessary to remedy the 
calamity of Poitiers. It was held at Paris, and was com- 
posed of eight hundred members, of whom four hundred 
were of the third estate ; and in view of this composition, 
and of the critical condition of the state, it need not sur- 
prise us to find this assembly pushing even further than the 
preceding the tendency to secure control by an adminis- 
trative system. This body was assembled under the 
auspices of the heir apparent, subsequently known as 
Charles the Wise, for the monarch had been captured at 
Poitiers, and was a prisoner in the hands of the English. 

It declared its own sovereignty in all matters of adminis- 
tration and finance ; impeached the counsellors of the king ; 
ordered the dismissal of the mass of the officers of justice, 
and the creation of a council of reform from its own body ; 
forbade the conclusion of peace without its consent ; and 
declared its right to assemble without a royal mandate. 
Parliament reached this stage in England three centuries 
later — in 1645. 

From these instances we see that the states-general in 
France was then the grand inquest of the nation on the con- 
dition of the country ; that it proceeded as effectively and 
fundamentally, in theory, toward the redress of grievances, 
as a modern English parliament, or an American congress ; 
and that the sovereignty was as evidently in its hands. 
France was, therefore, at that period possessed of a national 
legislature — a body which had secured the recognition of 
the facts of political life, and had made a declaration of 
those facts the law of the land. This body had extorted 
the consent of all orders to the taxation of the nobles and 
prelates as well as the commons, and had secured the 
recognition of the principle that no subject should be com- 
pelled to pay a tax to the imposition of which he had not 



COITSTITUTIO^AL MOj^AECHY. 193 

assented Iby Ms representative. But all these gains were 
lost, and this parliamentary control failed to become a 
permanent part of the political machinery, through the fact 
that its proceedings disclosed the dangers, to the privileged 
orders, of the growth of such a system, and so combined 
against it all the privileged elements and the crown. 

Nobles and clergy, with instinctive apprehension, com- 
bined against the bourgeoisie, and these, in their turn, 
carried the assertion of their case so far that they stood on 
very uncertain ground. Determined not to countenance, by 
their presence, the extreme demands for reform made by 
the Third Estate, the nobles went home, and the clergy, 
eventually, followed this example. More brave than wise, 
the bourgeoisie persisted, not considering that, as they 
were nominally but a half of the nation, so they were, per- 
haps, even less, if it should come to a trial of force, and that 
to agitate demands which they could not physically main- 
tain, was but to give a reason for their destruction. 

In every essential feature, this movement of 1356 was the^ 
exact forerunner of the movement of 1789. An assembly 
of the nation was called to devise remedies for evils of the' 
greatest magnitude ; in this assembly the commons asserted' 
themselves so extremely, that the representatives of the 
other classes seceded ; thereupon the commons assumed tO' 
be the assembly of the nation, and pushed the case so far 
as to arouse the latent ferocity of a greatly oppressed 
people ; and this led to butcheries which produced reac- 
tion. But the issue was different as the age was. In 1356- 
the feudal organization was still vital, and equal to an: 
extraordinary occasion. By 1789 all the vigor of organiza- 
tion had been concentrated in the functions of the crown, 
and, with these paralyzed, there was no help. In 1356, the. 
feudal organism, not compelled to await a royal initiative,, 



194 MODEEI^ STATES. 

rallied at every point ; Ibnt for want of sucli a possibility in 
1789, the whole fabric was swept away. 

But the parliamentary growth in France was lost by 
perversion. Mediaeval societies did not distinguish between 
legislative and judicial functions. Making laws and apply- 
ing them, declaring general principles for the government of 
the people and declaring that a given case came under any 
one of these principles, were provinces of authority not 
separated from one another. Some portion of that early 
failure to distinguish between the political and the legal 
aspects of justice has lingered in names that are in use with 
us even now ; for in some of the New England States the 
legislature is still called the general court. In the same 
spirit a court was called in France by a name that, in other 
countries, has become a generic designation for legislatures. 
In England and France, whose systems grew side by side 
from the eleventh century, where that of England was a 
graft from France, whose growth varied, as did the soil and 
climate and other conditions ; in both countries, political 
and legal topics were equally determined at first by a 
primary body, that may sometimes, and, in certain of its 
aspects, be with justice called a national congress ; and, at 
other times, and in other aspects, must be called a royal 
council or court. In its aspects as a royal council it is 
not only a court, but a legislature ; it decides in disputes 
that have arisen under existing laws, and it makes new 
laws ; as a national congress it is also a court, for it not 
only determines the great political emergency that is com- 
monly the occasion of its session, but it adjudicates private 
issues. 

As it grew in France, and went with the conquerors to 
England, the royal council was a feudal institution, the 
nearest approach to which, in the present day, would be 



COIS^STITUTIOXAL MOIS-AECHY. 195 

fonnd if the Englisli privy council and the English cabinet, 
with theu' respective functions, were merged into one Ibody. 
It was at first the only high court, as the monarch was the 
fountain of justice, and, eventually, the highest of many 
courts ; it also advised and assisted the ruler in those func- 
tions now regarded as strictly political. 

Out of this double function, this divided service, came, 
eventually, a division of the primary body ; for that which 
had determined both political and legal issues, was restricted 
to the latter as a constant need, and into it were admitted 
men specially instructed in the laws, which narrowed and 
limited its character, and left the way clear for the growth 
of the other body as an exponent of the national will. In 
England, the king's council, in its first aspect, became a 
court of justice ; in its other aspect it spread out to a national 
parliament. In France, the court of justice was called a 
parliament ; the parliament was called the assembly of the 
states-general. But in England, the relegation of the 
judicial function to the courts, and the political function to 
the parliament, was reasonably distinct ; the division was 
not so sharp and clear as it is in our own age in that 
country, especially not under certain of the kings who, 
even so late as the time of James II., extorted political 
service from the courts. There, however, the parliament 
met frequently, and eventually became as much a matter 
of course in the machinery of the state as the courts them- 
selves. 

In France, this royal council, with the name of parlia- 
ment, remained a court, but claimed legislative functions ; 
in England, its legislative functions became paramount to 
all others, and it retained judicial functions only in par- 
ticular circumstances. This was because, in England, the 
idea of the nation displaced that of the king as the central 



196 modeejS" states. 

point of all allegiance, and, in consonance with tliat change, 
the king's council hecame a national council. In France 
the council was more filled with lawyers than with lords, 
for it had more disputes to settle, and the advice of men 
learned in the law was more called for. 

Moreover, even when, in France, the function of the 
body was legislative, the logical hahit of that people misled 
them, for they apparently thought it absurd that men 
should make laws who were not specially educated in the 
law, and such education was deemed a prerequisite for a 
place in parliament. This narrowed the character and 
spirit of the institution. In England no such view was 
taken of the law. Scientific ideas did not pervert a plain 
purpose. It was deemed the function of parliament to de- 
clare the will of the people on points before them, and 
the laws were only the declarations of that will, and so 
the fittest to make them were such as best knew that 
will. 

As it was thought, in France, absurd that laws should be 
made by men who were not learned in the law, it was also 
thought absurd that the people should say who were the 
fittest lawyers for this service ; and thus the choice of the 
parliament was separated from the people. Thus, as the 
popular will was ruled out, the body only departed further 
from the representative position, and therefore, whenever it 
became the interest of the monarch to oppose the will of the 
parliament, he could do it efiectively, for he seemed to 
oppress, not a body related in any way to the nation, but 
only a hierarchy of the lawyers, in whose defence none 
would arise. 

In a full statement of the theory of the relation of the 
so-called parliament in France to the legislative function, it 
would be just to say that the states-general was the legisla- 



CO]S"STITUTIONAL MOITAECHT. 197 

ture, and alone had anthoritj to make laws ; but its laws 
required to be promulgated by royal decree, and were with- 
out force till they had thus been brought to the notice of 
the parliament (court), and until that body, as a sort of 
keeper of the statutes had registered them. The parliament 
of Paris had, therefore, a kind of association in legislative 
duty, inasmuch as its act was necessary to complete the 
validity of a law, and this association of the parliament was 
the deceptive fact which probably prevented in France the 
normal growth of a legislature, for this body seemed to the 
nation to stand in that position, yet it was a legislature 
never able to resist the will of an arbitrary monarch. It was 
through the deception occasioned by this function of the 
parliament that the kings acquired the power to make laws. 
As no law had validity unless it was registered by the 
parliament, so, of course, without previous enactment by the 
states-general, the registration of the law, so-called, had no 
value ; yet this formality of registration came to stand to 
the public mind in place of the more vital part of the pro- 
cess of legislation. As registration stood, in the first place, 
to the country for an evidence and certificate that the proper 
steps had been taken in the process of legislation, it was 
eventually accepted that whatever was registered was a 
law. From being valid as the sign of a vital fact, this for- 
mality of registration eventually became valid without the 
the fact, and stood in lieu of the fact. Charles the Wise 
required the parliament to register as laws his personal 
decrees ; and as this encroachment was made in the moment 
of depression that followed the defeat of a great popular 
movement in the cities and throughout the country, it 
secured the ground it claimed. It is true that certain of the 
dignities of the states-general were bestowed upon the 
parliament, which thus affected to represent the states- 



■>,•* 



198 MODEEN STATES. 

general ; but it was too mucli dependent on the royal will 
to make the pretence respectable. The registration of the 
king's decrees as laws was a clear assumption by the 
throne, and the power thns obtained by the crown remained 
with it until the head of Louis XYI. fell into the basket 
under the guillotine. 

An important fact should be noted in regard to the 
history of the English parliament, and of its more vital part 
— the house of commons. English writers are fond of 
referring its origin to Teutonic influences and Saxon prac- 
tices. This is another part of that sentimental delusion 
which Englishmen have accepted from one another as 
to more than one point of their history. They seem to 
please themselves with the notion that an abjectly subject 
people cannot grow in English air, or be found ascendantly 
in the same race. They hold that they are free because the 
Saxons were free, and further, that the true authors of all this 
freedom were the Germans of Tacitus. The coarse resem- 
blances that give color to these presumed relationships do 
not imply descent, but only the broad coincidences of 
humanity, the passage of peoples through analogous crises. 
Resemblances as accurate occur in all history. It would 
be as rational for Americans, two thousand years hence, to 
discover in the tribe republic of the Iroquois, and in the 
great council of the Five Nations, the germ of the republic 
of 1775, and the congress of the United States, as it is for 
Englishmen to credit the happy condition of their country, 
in any degree whatever, to the savage warriors of the 
Heptarchy. 

There is in the British parliament a Saxon modification ; 
but the institution came to England directly from France, 
as its name might suggest, even if the fact was not suscep- 
tible of historical demonstration. It was transplanted at a 



CONSTITUTIOIS^AL MONAECHT. 199 

time when England bore the yoke of French dominion, and 
when the tendency of effort was to assimilate the country 
in all respects to feudal France ; and in the veins of the 
man especially distinguished for this introduction there 
was certainly no English blood, nor any Teutonic, except 
as all French nobles of that period were of Teutonic origin. 
In France, however, there were three houses of parliament ; 
in England there were never but two, and this may have 
been due to the condition of the country under the Saxon 
laws, which never recognized the clergy as a separate caste ; 
but the Noi^an tenacity of conceptions produced a rudi- 
mentary third house in '^ convocation." England had, 
therefore, the estate of the nobles in the House of Lords, 
the estate of the people in the House of Commons, and the 
estate of the clergy in Convocation— the dim shadow of the 

third house. 

Parliaments are, at first, always ^'an obligatory convo- 
cation of the royal council," and, as such, were regarded as 
a burden on the people ; but they became the instruments 
through which the people sought a redress of grievances, 
and what are bills now were petitions then. Deputies were, 
at first, sent up by the country to hear and learn the king's 
will ; next, to represent to the king the will and views of 
the people on specified points in specified ways— that is, 
with instructions ; but when the topics became multitudi- 
nous, and the interest of the nation was not clearly seen 
with regard to every one, deputies were sent to represent 
generally, and in their own discretion, the will of those who 
sent them. From having been specifically representative, 
they became generally representative. In this stage of 
parliamentary growth the deputies are not to " answer with 
their heads " for obedience to the instructions of their con- 
stituents. They are trusted. They are, therefore, in a con- 



200 MODERN STATES. 

dition to betray their trust, and many do it ; and thus the 
king acquires a new supremacy, by a new power, over the 
nation, obtained through the corruption of its deputies by 
appeals to their vanity and cupidity. 

He makes them nobles, for he is the ''fountain of 
honor;" and he makes them rich by dividing the spoils 
with them, for the grants made by the king to individuals, 
as rewards for so-called public service, are simply divisions 
of the plunder wrung from the people in the form of taxa- 
tion, and generally by the co-operation of these indivi- 
duals in parliament. All the great fortunes that origi- 
nated in royal grants are simply monuments of ancient 
jobbery. 

Parliaments are the sphere of the oligarchic endeavor, 
and the manner in which they are constituted exhibits the 
measure in which the oligarchy has progressed in the direc- 
tion in which it is, at last, always lost in democracy. It may 
be constituted, and in the early history of the nation always is 
constituted, on some theory which denies that the body of a 
people are of any political value ; and, as such, is only the 
convenience of absolute authority. It may be a mere 
means of making responsibility felt. Thus the Tartars per- 
mitted a parliament to exist in Russia as a tax-gathering 
machinery, and in order that there might be some one to 
do homage, and by whose act the nation could consent. 

In the same way the G-ermans in France, in 1871, found 
a parliament a necessary issue from the position they had 
reached as conquerors. They could not hold France as a 
conquered territory without involving a general European 
war ; they needed a treaty of peace, and one whose validity 
could not be denied in the future, and must, therefore, have 
a power that could consent on behalf of the nation. All 
the early parliaments originated in a relation between 



CONSTITUTIOIS'AL MO]S'AECHY. 201 

gOYemments and peoples not dissimilar in essence from 
tMs relation between conqueror and conquered. Some one 
to consent to the imposition of taxes, and to help the king 
with information how much would he peaceably endured, 
these were the prime needs. 

But as the redress of grievances "becomes a condition of 
the consent, the parliament endeavors to support its case hy 
gathering and concentrating strength from a larger circle of 
the national life, and this circle tends, by the nature of the 
case, to spread more and more, and assumes constantly 
larger proportions ; and the destiny of the nation, its con- 
tinuance under despotic rule, or its acquisition of civil 
liberty and constitutional institutions, depends upon whether 
this tendency can be checked and suppressed, or whether 
the impulse is sufficiently vigorous to overcome all opposing 
endeavors. 

In an age when the vital element of the national aggre- 
gation is a body of armed knights, the necessary head of 
the state, the point at which the national will is most 
readily made effective, is the commander of those knights ; 
he who is potentially the greatest of them, or who holds a 
position in vhtue of the assumption, or admission, that he is 
the greatest of them. But as that age passes away, as war- 
like activities cease to be the only evidences of national life, 
as industries arise, commerce grows, experience and intelli- 
gence teach the need of recognizing the regular operation of 
other forces than the sword ; and this can only be done by 
some agreement between all those elements in the life of the 
nation that have grown into consequence, and that which 
still holds the sword. For this agreement an instrument is 
necessary, and the instrument used for the i^urpose is that 
already in existence for enabling the king to get at the tax- 
able wealth of the people ; for if men from every part of a 



202 MODEEN STATES. 

land are iDrouglit togetlier in order tliat the king may know 
what taxes he can get, this forced meeting furnishes a happy 
opportunity for the various parts of the nation to under- 
stand between themselves their relations to this dominant 
authority, their need for it, their power to dispense with it, 
and their opportunity to control and limit it. As soon as 
these things are understood, it is the agreement of the 
parliament, and not the edge of the king' s sword, that is the 
focussing point of the national will. 

Despite this logical certainty, however, no theory yet 
assigns legislative power absolutely to the representatives 
of the nation. In England the king may name peers enough 
to change the majority in one house, and has always been 
able to corrupt the other ; while in the United States the 
veto of the executive is equal to the vote of a majority. 

lY. — There are certain phases of the national thought that 
act with greater energy than others in producing and forming 
that general opinion by which the justice or propriety of the 
compact is weighed, and which inspire movement to modify 
it ; and the foremost of these is the moral judgment of the 
nation, commonly shaped upon religious conceptions. 

Kings had supported their authority, from time imme- 
morial, by the pretence of a divine right ; but a great mis- 
take was made when, in the interest of modern thrones, this 
was asserted in the form of invoking a religious sanction, 
and the support of the church first for one or another prince, 
and then for all absolute authority. It is seen everywhere 
in our inquiry, as a general principle, that whatever power a 
monarch is compelled to appeal to to sustain his rule, 
eventually uses the opportunity, thus given, in its own 
interest, and ousts the king of a part or the whole of his 
dignities or authority. As the king pretended to act on 
divine commands, there came between him and divinity 



C0^'3TITUTI0:s"AL MOXAECHT. 203 

always tliose who pretended to be tlie moiitlipiece of the 
higher power, and, by his own pretence, he was compelled 
to recognize the validity of their dictation.^ 

In Western Europe this made thi^ones the prizes of 
priestly bargains. They were staked on intrigues con- 
ducted at Rome. If the pope' s consent was a title to-day 
for the prince in possession, it would be an equally good 

* The ideas of Frederick fhe Great, on this subject, are exhibited in this 
conversation with Prince William of BrunsTvick : 

'' Will your Majesty permit me to mention an idea that occupies my mind 
and greatly astonishes me ? " 

" Well, what is this idea? Let me hear it." 

" Sire, I am not much surprised that many philosophers declare themselves 
unbelievers in religion ; but I cannot conceive that sovereigns could possibly 
hold the same language." 

'* And who, sir, is to hinder them? " 

" Their own interests, sire ; for is not religion one of the supports of their 

authority ?" 

"My friend, I, for my part, find order and the laws sufficient. And have I 
not, in addition, the interests of my citizens, their habits, education, and want 

of power ? " 

" But what can be more desirable for kings than a religion that represents 
them as the image of God, and which enjoins upon the people a blind obedi- 
ence to their will." 

"My friend, this blind obedience is acceptable only to tyrants; true 
monarchs require none but a rational, well-motived obedience. Besides, the 
priests represent us as the depositories of the divine power, while they take 
care to style themselves its interpreters, and the mouth by which it speaks ; in 
this manner they subject us to their will and place us at their feet. I, there- 
fore, reject that blind obedience which they preach to the people, only that 
they may themselves require a similar obedience from me." 

" Nevertheless, sire, there are among mankind villains perverted in their 
nature, and hardened in their crimes ; against this class of men religion can- 
not but be the most salutary resource; the fear of the punishment of a future 
life frequently produces the best effects on even the most corrupt." 

"Oh, I have the gallows for such scoundrels as these, and that is suffi- 
cient." 



204 modee:n" states. 

title to-morrow for the prince in exile, if the one in pos- 
session did not fully accept the papal will in any differ- 
ences that might arise ; though the popes were commonly 
wary in the application of the principle, and asserted 
their preferences with a nice discrimination of the strength 
that could be rallied to the support of the respective 
princes* Sometimes, however, when the occasion of 
difference involved an important point, they boldly quar- 
reled with him who had all the physical elements in his 

favor. 

Yiewed in their ecclesiastical aspect constitutional 
monarchies were the political results of the reformation. 
The church, the unity which the people of a country 
obtained by ecclesiastical organization, afforded the first 
common point of support for the opposition and hostility to 
the sovereign thitherto absolute ; and it afforded this point 
of support because it changed those relations by which the 
nobles had always been inimical, and the people well- 
disposed to the royal authority. It brought over the 
people to support the revolt of the nobles, and thus made a 
unit of the nation against the king it assailed ; or it com- 
pelled the nobles to join in the assent of the people, and so 
unified all in support of the monarch who had made terms 
with it. It changed the conditions of the political conflict. 
Primarily, nobles fought the king's pretence to exercise 
over them any other authority than that of a war leader, 

* The Cardinal de Joyeuse wrote from Rome to Henry IV. of France : " Your 
Majesty has nothing more to hope or fear but only from your own manage- 
ment ; and you are to expect that, as matters go well or ill in France, you 
shall be treated here accordingly. So that to know how you stand in grace at 
Rome, you will have no need to be informed by your ambassador's dispatches 
or by mine ; you will find the truest intelligence from day to day by your own 
success." — Maoibou. 



COITSTITUTIOT^AL MOITAECHY. 205 

and tlie people supported Mm as their defender against the 
local tyrant-the noble ; and in this each acted on impulses 
natm^ally resulting from their relations ; l^ut when kings, 
whose position was, for any reason, doubtful, sought to 
strengthen it by obtaining the countenance of the pope and 
the priests, they first recognized a new element of power as 
efficient in the case, and this element used its moral and 
superstitious influence over nobles and people to compel 
them to accept such a position in the quarrel as papal 
policy might assign them, rather than the position they 
might take acting on their unrestrained impulses. Nobles, 
whose natural tendency was to fight the king, being terror- 
ized by the church, relinquished their will in its favor ; and 
the people who, left to themselves, always sustained the 
royal authority as mMer and juster to them than any other, 
armed themselves against it, as the priest assured them that 
to fight in its support was to fight for the evil one. 

At first it was the royal appeal that moved the papal 
machinery in its favor ; subsequently the papal machinery, 
sure of its influence, moved on its own volitions, and royal 
authority was the puppet of its intrigues. It made its 
support the issue always of a bargain, and assisted those 
who conceded the highest price in substantial rewards. If 
the king gave what Kome demanded, he secured its alliance 
in his quarrel ; but if the revolting nobles promised more, 
the humble head of the Christian church gave up to them 
the whilom representative of divine right. 

Out of all this came some confusion— a loss of that dis- 
tinctness of definition which had earlier made so simple the 
lines of division between the elements in the political con- 
flict ; but as the dominion of Home passed away, the ele. 
ments returned spontaneously to their original relation, with 
this important difi'erence, that they had seen that a moral 



206 MODERIT STATES. 

nnity, however secured, was tlie determining principle of all 
issues as to sovereignty. 

It is, indeed, too little considered in those conflicts in 
which the so-called temporal authorities of the state are 
at issue with the church, that the church is the first and 
oldest organization of the whole people of every land. 
Popes, Mshops, priests, are always held up by princes 
and dukes as usurpers, pretenders, invaders of other men's 
rights ; but the moral unity of humanity is older than the 
political unity ; and while the political unity changes from 
age to age, and is in constant fluctuation, the other is 
always the same ; for man's relation to nature, and to the 
simple instincts upon which religion is based, are not 
variable as are his relations to neighboring peoples. In 
the priest the king deals not necessarily with a foreign 
invader, but often with the spokesman of a universal de- 
mocracy. 

But the point of greatest consequence in the appeal of 
princes to the papal authority, was its plain recognition 
that a time had come when thrones needed to stand on 
other than strictly political and practical grounds. This 
invited, under the form of religious discussions, an examina- 
tion of the political machinery ; and the unsettling of every 
absolute throne may be dated from the time when monarchs, 
basing their authority on Biblical texts, challenged the 
production of Biblical texts against that authority ; for the 
men of the eighteenth century, who obtained a hearing as 
the opponents of superstition, rather than of political op- 
pression, were able to show, what neither kings nor popes 
seem to have imagined, that while the whole scriptures 
assumed and accepted as the proper order of human rela- 
tions, that hierarchical system of society, which prevailed 
in the world when they were written, Christianity was an 



COITSTITTJTIOXAL MOIS-AECHT. 207 

outgrowth of the end and decay of that system, and, as a 
protest against an ancient order, was, in its whole spirit and 
character, thoroughly and extravagantly revolutionary. 
In the eighteenth century society in Western Europe had 
well nigh outgrown the political conditions of the absolute 
monarchy ; and the revolt, the impulse for change, for the 
adaptation of an old world to new thoughts made its appeal 
to men's minds in the examination of religious relationship 
with practical reference to the state. 

Giving religious reasons for political facts began with 
the kings, but the lesson was readily learned by the other 
side. Because the ecclesiastical and political elements of 
the state were so intimately associated, the criticism of one 
was an assault upon the other. Criticism of the political 
machinery was habitually repressed ; but as authority 
quarreled, from time to time, with the church, it was dis- 
posed to encourage the poj)ular examination of the grounds 
of priestly pretence and assumption. The philosophers, 
therefore, were applauded for their sharp treatment of the 
church, though if one followed their reasoning to find how a 
remedy could be applied to the abuses they exposed, it 
was readily seen that this implied profound changes in the 
political structure also.^ 

Naturally, popular thought, neither in literature nor 
elsewhere, could assail absolute authority, whether of 
monarch or pope, without the sharp correction of the prison 
or the stake ; but, under the protection of a pope, thought 
might assail the sovereign in one year, and, under protec- 
tion of the sovereign, assail the poj^e in the next ; and thus 

* In his MSS. Memoirs, Cardinal Fleury said : " Those books in which 
religion is openly attacked, recommend at the same time that the will and the 
views, the rio^hts and the claims, of unlimited monarchs should be subjected 
to close examination." 



208 MODEEIT STATES. 

an examination of the albuses practised loj each made its 
way in the world. '' It is onr pleasure," said Boniface the 
Eighth to Philip the Fair, ''thou shonldst know that thou 
art onr subject as well in things temporal as spiritual, and 
it belongs not to thee to bestow prebends or collate bene- 
fices." Here was a quarrel over patronage, and whoever 
assailed the ruler on this point was safe in any religious 
establishment in the realm. On the other hand, the sove- 
reign, in these disputes at that time, but far more at a later 
period, when sovereigns themselves became philosophers, 
thought it was a happy piece of craft to protect writers who 
assailed the fearful abuses of the church, when they them- 
selves happened to be at issue with it. They protected that 
assault, and did not perceive that it was a political conflict, 
the true nature of which was thinly disguised by the use of 
religious terms and names. 

But this was productive of some hurt to the popular 
cause, for it led the advocates of this cause astray, and in- 
volved them in disputes that had no relation to the progress 
of the people. It committed them also to false theories, for 
while their champions reaUy assailed political evils, they 
seemed to assail religion ; and when the battle came upon 
the evil days of the French revolution, it is certain that the 
popular advocates had then lost the perception of the real 
nature of the conflict, and did assail religion itself, as if that 
was the only cause of all evil. 

AU the political propaganda of the age, therefore, seemed 
to the kings, and to the people as well, to have for its 
primary purpose an assault on religious ideas, for it did not 
stop merely at facts that were patently abusive, but 
arraigned the whole priestly system with equal severity. 
Literature, thought, inquiry, which really sought the politi- 
cal emancipation of society, and the progress of the people, 



CONSTirUTIOlS-AL MOl^AECHY. 209 

was found in the false position of the assailant of religion, 
and advantage was taken of this fact to hold the liberal 
movement np to opprobrium for infidelity ; and the move- 
ment was even tnmed aside from its great purpose, and it 
seemed to be forgotten that the intelligence of the world 
had any other function than to deny all the truths that any 
portion of humanity held sacred. 

So innocent a position, therefore, as the mere denial of 
the divine basis of authority, thus ultimately produced 
that all opponents of authority stood before the world as 
infidels, and even committed them to unprofitable disputes 
on points without relation to politics, and arrayed against 
them, unnecessarily, the prejudice of all believers. It was 
made to seem a necessary part of faith in human rights that 
men should believe there was no God. The result of this 
was inimical to progress, but not to progress alone ; for as 
all republicans were made to seem 'infidels" — opponents 
of established forms of faith were so-called — all infidels- 
also found that their camp was with the republicans ; and,, 
as it is a part of the necessary growth of humanity that the- 
whole of every society shall, from time to time, become^ 
'' infidels," that is, opponents of the state church, this, 
association of republican theories with infidelity was ulti- 
mately as injurious to authority as it was primarily to the 
right advance of liberal ideas. 

V. — The organization of the constitutional monarchy 
proceeds by the division and distribution of those functions 
of the ruler that were at first exclusively possessed by the 
king. Anciently, as we have seen, the oligarchy limited 
the monarchy in one of two ways. It displaced the king 
and gave his office to its owti members in rotation ; or it 
divided the functions of the office between the different 
oligarchs. No advantage was found in the first of these 



210 MODEEN STATES. 

plans, Ibut tlie second proved Ibeneficial, and coincided so 
happily witli the needs of societies as states reached greater 
proportions, that it became the l)asis of the modern admini- 
strative system, and this sort of division has proceeded to a 
greater or less degree, in proportion as states have advanced 
in civilization. It has always proceeded on suhstantially 
the same lines. The function of royalty that is first divided 
from the others and made a separate office, is that of service 
at the altar of the public sacrifices, and the result is the 
high priest, and, ultimately, the state church. From the 
time of this separation, the declaration of the divine will is 
not always in agreement with the royal purposes, as we 
have seen above. Separations that follow this are those of 
the judge and the commander of the forces. Instances are 
plentiful where the military office is the second that is 
separated from the royal unity, and others where the 
separation of the judicial office follows that of the high 
priest. This varies with the activities that become promi- 
nent through the circumstances and the character of the 
people. There are, indeed, cases where the priestly office is 
retained while every other is taken, the king being at last 
merely the high priest, or sometimes only the first bigot of 
the nation. Italy and Spain present instances of this in 
modern history, but even England has several times 
.approached this point. 

From the person of the monarch is separated, in this 
process, not only every one of the three great primary func- 
tions of royalty, but also every function that is added by 
the new duties imposed by new conceptions of the sphere 
of government. Functions thus separated from royalty 
become, in the modern system, the great departments of 
state and the public offices generally ; and the views 
which prevail in any nation of the importance of any one 



CONSTITUTIOIN'AL MOXAECHT. 211 

of these respectively, and of their niim'ber, may Ibe seen in 
the number of the cabinet ministers, and in the division 
among them of the whole field of administration. 

In politics, the administrative system, this extreme sub- 
division of the original functions of royalty is like the 
division of labor in industrial pursuits, and, through it, the 
governments of great states are conducted with the order 
and success that, in the ancient world, characterized only 
small states. In modern times the structure of society, and 
the varied activities that engage attention, are complicated, 
various, infinite ; no single human mind could keep pace 
with the requirements they make upon government in any 
one country, for supervision, regulation, restraint, or pro- 
tection ; and, unless these requirements are met, confusion, 
decay, and a sort of cannibal war destroys all. 

An organized administrative machinery is, therefore, the 
necessary product of the conditions, and in this the king 
eventually becomes like some little wheel in a great compli- 
cated mechanical ax)paratus ; some wheel that is important, 
from which the movement of all other wheels starts, from 
which they may even take direction within definite limits ; 
but a wheel that, however important, can be replaced when 
it is out of order, with little or no derangement of other 
parts of the machinery. In such a system, with such a 
relation of the king to the government and the society, it is 
not a matter of the greatest conceivable consequence what 
man of the whole number is king— or, rather, fills the royal 
office. It matters not from which bit of metal any particu- 
lar wheel is made. It is true that when the royal office 
falls into the hands of a man of genius— a man especially 
with a great capacity for administration— his will j^revails 
even in all the operations of the mere machinery. It directs 
the whole. Every pin, and spring, and wheel, and bar, is 



212 MODEEIS" STATES. 

governed by his impulse. But at the end of his life or 
reign that influence lapses, and the machinery operates 
effectively from the slighter impulse of his successor. It is 
for the vast number of generations which come between 
men of genius that society is compelled to provide ; and for 
these the machinery is of greater consequence, the man of 
less. Although governments of this class are called consti- 
tutional monarchies, the monarch is only nominally a 
sovereign. He is the functionary of a will not his own, 
and he stands or falls as he enforces or offends that will. 

With the various functions of royalty thus erected into 
administrative departments, the heads of the several depart- 
ments are, in theory, the king's '' secretaries " or the 
''ministers" of his will. In fact, however, they are not 
inspired, or directed, or controlled, by his will; and in 
practical politics the operation of these functions by separate 
individuals is conceived as the guarantee of the nation 
against government by the king's will. These functions are 
surrendered to the nation to be filled and administered as it 
chooses, and they are the effective guarantees of limitation. 

But the view taken of the heads of the administrative 
departments as to whether they are the servants of the 
nation or the king, is the source of great disputes. They 
are, in fact, as we have shown, results of legitimate political 
dissections of the sovereign office ; but the tendency of the 
lawyers to strengthen sovereign power with theories has 
been active at this point ; and even in states where the con- 
stitutional character of the great offices is clear, they are 
still assimilated by their names to the personal attendants 
and upper servants of the feudal sovereigns. Thus they 
are still called his secretaries, his grand chamberlain, his 
chancellor, his master of the rolls, and master of the horse. 
The commander of the forces held his title of constable 



CONSTITUTIOIS'AL MOIS'AECHY. 213 

jfrom the theory that he was still the keeper of the royal 
stables ; and the marshals theirs from the notion that they 
were only his subordinates. 

But a nation, sure of its own purposes, is not imposed 
upon by devices like these, and takes only the simple view 
that, in these offices, royalty has assigned to it, for good and 
sufficient reasons, certain divisions of the sovereign authority. 
By the use of the word "prerogative," the lawyers have en- 
deavored to go behind the consideration of these ''good and 
sufficient reasons," and to re-establish on a basis of theory, 
what had been tried and put away on the basis of fact. 

Prerogative is a sort of lawyers' equivalent for divine 
right ; the assertion of the supremacy of the royal will 
against even recognized limitations. It was the right of the 
feudal sovereign ; the appeal to him as lord paramount 
against lords of lesser authority ; and, of course, when the 
feudal relations passed away, this legitimately passed with 
them, and gave place to different relations between the 
sovereign and his subject. But the lawyers, fond of lum- 
ber, argued for the existence, in a constitutional ruler, of 
the attributes of a feudal lord ; and argued so successfully, 
that there was no confuting them save by cutting off their 
client' s head. 

Prerogative, it may be noted, seems to assume the much- 
disputed pomt of compact. Dispute and difference in 
states commonly arises over the interpretation of provisions 
made for their government, and mostly with regard to some 
point as to which the terms of the agreement are vague or 
sOent. It is then argued in favor of royalty that all unde- 
fined or undeclared power is lodged with the king, is 
derived from the condition anterior to all provision or 
agreement, and is untouched by the agreement, or is su- 
perior to its provisions. 



214 MODEEIT STATES. 

In the conflict of these views, one way or the other, arose 
all those disputes around which has grown up the great 
systems of constitutional jurisprudence which make it so 
extremely difficult, sometimes, to get at the real nature of 
very simple facts. Should a sovereign, in any case, pre- 
vail in a great conflict with a people, his doctrine of prero- 
gative would certainly be held to be right, at least to the 
extent to which it was involved in the conflict ; but as the 
people have always prevailed, their theory of the great 
offices is the acknowledged one in the world to-day ; and 
this is, that they are the material guarantees that the 
nation holds for the good conduct of authority ; the nation 
has been so often deceived by the royal promise that cer- 
tain things shall be done in a defined way, that it, at last, 
exacts the agreement that they shall be done under its 
supervision, by a person whom it can hold directly respon- 
sible for failure or perversion. This is the doctrine of 
ministerial responsibility. Within the limits of his special 
function the minister is a sort of fragmentary sovereign ; but 
so far as he is a king at all, he is a king with this particular 
distinction, that he is not covered by the notion of political 
infallibility. It is not said of him that he can do no wrong. 
On the contrary, it is assumed that he may, and will, and 
hence it is provided that he shall be an ordinary human 
creature, who can be held accountable. 

In England, where this process has gone further than in 
other countries, the monarch is not the executive, save by a 
constitutional fiction. He survives as the head of the 
feudal society, and is its leader only in other than political 
activities. From these he has been pushed aside. All 
power to determine political action is with the ministry, 
which is an executive council. Formerly this was a council 
to assist the executive with advice supposed to be derived 



CONSTITUTIOITAL MOZS^AECHY. 215 

from special knowledge, and each member was supposed 
to have, with tlie subjects of his department, such an ac- 
quaintance as the attorney-general had of the law. 

Ministerial substitution seems to have reached its ex- 
treme development there through an accident. The first 
monarch of the Hanoverian dynasty was unacquainted with 
the English language, and, therefore, the whole function of 
the executive at that time practically fell to those who were 
nominally his advisers. It is now so far recognized as their 
possession, that any attempt to change what usage has 
made constitutional would' be perilous to the throne. It is 
odd, that while supposititiously the difference in regard to 
executives is that, in monarchies, their tenure is more 
assured than in republics, it happens that any republican 
executive, chosen for a determined period and removable 
only for crimes, has a more stable tenure than the executive 
in the only firmly-founded, so-called, monarchy in Europe, 
where it is always subject to the fluctuations of party spirit. 
But a peculiar and incalculable advantage of the English 
system is, that while the executive is, for its functions, in re- 
lation with modern thought, it comes into existence by a 
process related to the ancient system, in virtue of which the 
sovereign office and tlie source of sovereignty are less 
separated than in republics. 

YI. — Although the stages of progress, or forms of gov- 
ernment, or differences in the relation of the sovereignty to 
the whole are many, there are, with regard to the source 
of sovereignty, but two kinds of states. In one kind the 
people are sovereign, in the other they are subject. They 
are subject where the executive wields an absolute author- 
ity, unlimited by laws, and unrestrained by any power in 
the state with a recognized riglit to dis^Dute his will. In all 
other governments, the executive is a functionary chosen 



216 MODEKl^ STATES. 

by the whole people, or by a body presumed to act in their 
interest ; and in these cases the people are sovereign, whether 
they act by themselves or by the representative body 
which is the organ of the general will, either appointed by 
election, or having an immemorially recognized appointment 
by inheritance. Distinctions between monarchies and 
republics do not involve any radical distinctions as to 
sovereignty, for in both it is held and administered for the 
people, and by them. If monarchies are, as defined by 
Montesquieu, systems where ''one governs by fixed and 
established laws," then this one makes these laws himself, 
or they are made by some other power. If he makes them 
himself, he can unmake them ; they are the expression of 
his will, and he is absolutely sovereign. But if they are 
made by some other power, whose will he merely puts in 
force, he is a functionary like the executive of a republic. 
Only the grounds of his tenure are difibrent ; the essential 
character of his office is the same. In the first change in 
the position of the sovereignty, therefore, that change by 
which the ruler ceases to be an absolute, and becomes a 
representative sovereign, there occurs the only change in 
the essential nature of the state that is due to the source 
of sovereignty, as to the distinction of individual or divided 
rule. In all later changes the state retains the essential 
nature acquired by that first change from absolute to 
limited sovereignty ; but there is a difference in the way 
in which this nature asserts itself and makes itself felt in 
the political fabric, dependent upon the spiiit that inspires 
its operations. 

In such a state the sovereignty, though formally with 
the executive, is really with that body or mass of the people 
—nobles or great citizens, historical aristocracy, financial 
princes, or energetic middle element— which sustains the 



co:n"stitutio]^al monaecht. 217 

king while satisfied with his conduct, or displaces him in 
given contingencies ; that element, whatever and wherever 
it may be in the state, which is actually and effectively the 
determining force in national action, and can, and does 
dominate all others in the nation' s life. 

The will that inspires an administrative system is the 
will of the potent class in the nation, whether this class be 
found at a higher or lower level in the whole range of the 
national vitality; and the essential distinction between 
different constitutional monarchies, as ultimately between 
these and republics, is not any variation in machinery, 
frame, or system ; but a difference in the point, higher 
or lower, at which the class is found that is potent in this 
respect, that is able to dictate the choice of the persons 
who shall administer the departments, and to shape and 
color their acts in accordance with its interests, prejudices, 
hopes, or fears. 

In ancient politics, men distinguished by different names 
governments that were the same as to form, but in which 
the spirit was different, as one or another class was domi- 
nant. Thus they called those timocracies where power was 
derived from the possession of property ; hagiocracies, 
where authority was in the hands of priests ; stratocracies, 
where soldiers were dominant. These were all oligarchies, 
and, as to any essential in form, they were practically 
identical ; but of course the spirit of these states differed as 
the oligarchs were in one case soldiers, priests, or thrifty 
men of wealth. Differences precisely analogous are seen in 
tiie states of the modern world, and the principal source 
of variation in those whose form is substantially the same, 
is as to what class or division of the nation is dominant. 
Thus the difference made in England by the change from 
absolute sovereignty to constitutional government, was 



218 MODEEIS" STATES. 

really not so great as tliat wMch lias been made in the 
strictly constitutional period of English history by the dis- 
placement from power of the feudal nobles, and the acces- 
sion of the commercial classes ; the change from an 
oligarchy inspired by pride of martial achievement and 
descent, to one inspired by the spirit of thrift and industry. 
These things make governments far more mdely different 
than they could be made by forms however various. 

Constitutional governments may be exclusively and nar- 
rowly oligarchical, or they may range thi^ough all possible 
graditions to the verge of democracy ; but as they are pos- 
sessed by classes, high or low, that keep them pure, and 
secure justice, order, and the equal administration of liberal 
laws, they are superior to all other forms ; but they are 
capable of perversion to every political evil in the hands 
of those animated by a selfish spirit and mean motives. 
Good government depends upon the possession or con- 
trol of the administrative system by that division of the 
people which is the best with regard to right political 
standards, and to the character of the age in which the 
state exists ; and form is of consequence principally as it 
tends to favor this result, or as it renders impossible the 
supremacy of moral or intellectual superiority. 

If a state has reached this point, at which its destiny 
is in the hands of some dominant element of the people, 
and does not possess in its social fabric, or in its con- 
stitutional limitations, some force to insure that this domi- 
nant element shall not be below a certain stage in degrees of 
intelh'gence, or fair standard of honest manhood, that state 
is at the edge of an abyss. If the assumed ends of public 
policy, the objects regarded as important, the ideals kept 
in view, must vary as the ruling division is one or another 
of the social elements, these points in the national activity 



co:n^stitutional moxaechy. 219 

can only lie retained witMn fair Hmits "by the fact that no 
essentiaUy destructive or evil element can come to the front 
in the national competitions for position ; for if a class, or a 
group of classes, has possession of the whole, and may rnle 
as if the nation were its private estate, it mnst inevitaWy 
ruin also, unless that class can be constantly kept to the 
loest standard of national vitality. 

YII._But what is the best standard of national vitality ? 
Social condition in a nation is the product of the phy- 
sical, moral, and intellectual state of the mass. With the 
highest state of the physical man, and the absence of the 
moral attributes, there could be no society. Man is then 
a wild beast. With the moral pushed to excessive and 
morbid prominence, as it is in lands where religious fanati- 
cism is endemic, the social status is sacrificed to frantic 
fancies. With the intellectual alone, the tendency is to the 
loss of the physical, without which there can be neither 
defence nor conquest. But a high social average results 
from a just balance of these. When the moral tendency is 
related to physical excellence; and when the physical 
culture is carried so far as is consistent with good inteUec- 
tual capacity, and does not degenerate to mere recuiTence 
to barbaric conditions, then a nation is at a point where it 
acquires, and may indefinitely retain in its people, the 
highest conceivable standard of vitality ; and as the na- 
tion is simply the sum of its units, counting the value as 
well as the number of the units, such a people must stand 
advantageously in the scale of nations. 

But the equilibrium of the elements is not the same as 
an equal development of each, but relates to the adaptation 
to actual conditions. There is a time when the physical is 
most called upon ; a time when the intellectual saves ; and a 
time when the moral cannot be dispensed with. France, in 



220 moderjN" states. 

virtue of physical vigor and the moral unity of a great idea, 
swejpt Europe; and nations, equally vigorous physically, 
and far superior intellectually, were at her feet. Germany 
arose with retained vigor when France had wasted her 
physical force, and when, also, the new conditions of warfare 
had made success dependent upon an altogether new kind 
of capacity, and gave occasion to the far superior German 
brain. England has persisted, with characteristic tenacity, 
because of the equilibrium of the forces in her history, the 
inevitable presence of the Germanic race at some point 
from which it can always reach the point to be maintained. 
Without a basis of physical vigor in the individual man 
there can be no great state, nor does a state survive where 
'^wealth accumulates and men decay." From .Eome to 
Prussia, all the armed struggles are athletic competitions 
of the breeds of men, in which, as a general result, the puny 
perish and the robust prevail. Other things being equal, 
every conflict ends in that way. There are abundant excep- 
tions to the rule, simply because other things are not always 
equal. If two races of men are not far different as to 
physical capacity, the victory that would legitimately be 
gained by the stronger, may be carried to the other side if 
a better brain and superior intelligence have contrived 
superior weapons or methods of combat, which, adapted 
to the circumstances, set aside the detriment of physical 
deficiency. There can be no doubt, for instance, that gun- 
powder and fire-arms— direct products of thought— would 
alone be sufficient to determine all conceivable wars in 
favor of those who possessed against those who were 
without them. Is it conceivable that in barbarism there 
could be a balance of physical vigor sufficient to overcome 
this difference ? If an army of Titanic heroes ; if Theseus, 
AchiUes, Hercules, all the Argonauts and the Greeks before 



COXSTITUTIO^^AL mo:n"Aechy. 221 

Troy, together assailed another city, and the walls were 
held by a race of pigmies armed with breechloaders, would 
the war last ten years— or ten days even 1 Results in wars 
between the cultured and the uncultured are not deter- 
mined by the physical force alone, but by the most ingen- 
ious application to the care of the natural laws that may pos- 
sibly apply. Even between cultured races, supposititiously 
equal in intellect, the conception of some one thinker may 
give the victory, as if a nation armed with the common 
musket should meet one armed with the latest improved 
rifles ; a difi*erence so smaU in principle would be found 
infinitely great in consequences. But even with the case 
restored by the equilibrium of inventions to the equality 
that existed in the earlier time, thought is also of great con- 
sequence. An Alexander, a Ceesar, a Bonaparte, with 
greater capacity for strategic perceptions, puts one brain in 
the scale successfully against the strictly physical attributes 
of half a million of men. 

Superior brain is superior capacity to deal intellectually 
with given cases ; and it is self-evident that such capacity 
is advantageous in proportion as the problems of national 
life are determined by reason ; and it is the tendency of 
progress to enlarge the field of the rational solution of difii- 
culties, and to restrict the resort of force. 

Vigorous impulse with small refiection characterizes the 
common brain, and is the source of acts that satisfy some 
momentary ebullition of thought ; and out of this impulse, 
with little consideration of any but the more immediately 
anticipated result, flows the greater stream of human 
activity, the life of the people that demands restraint, direc- 
tion, punishment ; restrictive laws, prisons, reformatories, 
asylums. But a brain in which there has grown sufficient 
reflective capacity to contem];)late not only the momentary 



222 MODEE^ STATES. 

satisfactions that result from our acts, l>ut also their ultimate 
consequences ; the brain which retains impulse enough to 
supply vigorously the energies that life requires, hut asso- 
ciates with it the quality that directs these energies to one 
or another purpose on rational standards ; such an organ is 
conceivable as the fact that most modifies the lives of 
nations ; makes it possible to permit all the liberties that 
give play to capacity ; ensures the possession of the politi- 
cal organization best adapted to the conditions; operates 
the vitality of nations with least friction. 

Citizenship of the best prder, such as the Spartan con- 
ceived in his criticism of the nations that " had not learned 
to obey," is the result of this point of culture. Without it 
there is no good citizenship and no happy state; for the 
happiness of the state is as the harmony of its laws with 
the life of the people, and the higher or lower plane of 
political existence upon which this harmony will permit the 
laws to be conceived. 

Intellectual superiority gives its best results in the pro- 
duction of the capacity to perceive and recognize the facts 
which govern the relations of men to one another ; and to 
choose the means which best distribute political justice, 
and thereby establish the state on those certain foundations 
of universal right that assure in its defence and support the 
consent and equal interest of all. Statesmanship to compre- 
hend the relation of the nation to the forces that are potent in 
the world at the time, and that affect its growth and exist- 
ence, and to comprehend its relations to its neighbors, and 
to conceive what laws will best conduce to the happiness of 
the people, and operate the powers of government with least 
waste by friction ; this is the first product, and the contriv- 
ance of the machinery in virtue of whose operations each 
quality can readily reach its proper sphere, is the rest. 



CONSTITUTIONAL MONAECHT. 223 

It is a proWem, tliat tlie future has to solve, whether a 
great development of brain is consistent with the retention 
of high physical vigor ; whether culture, wearing out the 
races at different points, necessarily wears out at some point 
even the race of greatest resistance ; whether the conception 
of muscular Christianity is so far an error that there is a 
point at which the world must choose between Christianity 
and muscle, to yield one or the other. If high culture and 
good physical growth, though evidently consistent in indi- 
vidual cases, cannot coexist in a whole people, then it is a 
necessary consequence that those governments are the best 
whose institutions distribute relatively to physical and 
mental force ; which secure the inequality of classes ; so 
that in the same race there are at the same time sections of 
highly-cultivated thinkers, and sections of others near to 
barbarian life in physical vigor. Of this, Greece was the 
best example in antiquity, and England is the best example 
in our day. In the presence of such a fact it would be 
demonstrable that equality is the one certain source of 
national ruin. 

If intellectual culture does wear away the physical 
vigor, this is not the same for all the races of men. Some, 
without loss of coarse vigor, reach a far higher stage of 
culture than others. Kaces, of what may be called a finer 
filt)re— delicate, fragile peoples— are, in the process of intel- 
lectual advance, worn away at a low point ; and the more 
robust races reach a higher stage. In this difference of 
capacity there comes into operation again a natural compe- 
tition of races, which decides great conflicts between them 
in favor ultimately of the better endowed, and which tends 
to give the world to the superior races only, subject to the 
qualification that the time seems likely to come when the 
physical will grow of less and less consequence, even for 



224 MODERTf STATES. 

war, tlirougli tlie operation of intellect in machinery. For 
as war, the great competitive trial, now stands, the nations 
that contrive the most effective war-machinery will triumph, 
on the sole condition that they preserve a sufficient physical 
force to defend the machinery, which, otherwise, their 
enemies wonld take from them. But it is conceivable that 
invention may change even this. 

But as the mere cultivation of physical capacity pro- 
duces, without the co-ordinate growth of intellect, only a 
nobler beast, so the intellect itself would prove a poor 
acquisition with no other sphere of action than the few and 
monotonous devices of war. All the better growth comes 
under the stimulus for the solution of other problems than 
such as these present. Apparently the best effect of intellect 
in the story of a nation is when it operates on the class of pro- 
blems that are vaguely called moral. Intellectual capacity 
makes men successful, or otherwise, to whatever point endea- 
vors are directed ; but this direction is under the influence of 
the moral element. Activity is confined to meaner conflicts 
as the moral element of the national character is small ; or if 
this element is potent, it is turned to the greater conceptions 
of human destiny, and the nobler side of the relations of man 
to man ; it attains the higher plane of endeavor. 

Morality results from the application of the collective 
thought of the peo^Dle to certain ideas, as those of right, 
justice, benevolence, generosity, purity ; and, in its largest 
scope, it relates to the state of the general disposition of the 
people, and their inclinations in regard to what are called 
virtues or vices. It deals with all those facts which give an 
unconscious direction to the general will ; that incline the 
many, by instinctive impulsion, toward one or another 
course, as it is deemed right, or just, or honest, or patriotic? 
or the contrary to these respectively. 



COlSrSTITUTIOIirAL MOITAECHY. 225 

Man is, therefore, protected from man by the moral 
opinion in all that sphere of life where it is scarcely possible 
to deline his relations by law, or where law falls short ; and 
in virtue of its operation there is, consequently, less antag- 
onism, and a less necessary waste of force to ensure the 
smooth operation of the processes of social pressure. There 
is a clearer comprehension of the mutual interdependence 
of persons. Hence the many are moulded to one mass, 
and there results a power that, in primitive conditions at 
least, could not otherwise be obtained. 

Moral force has relation to the emotional, as distin- 
guished from the physical and intellectual nature. It is 
made up of the impulses that are not related to physical 
wants, and that apparently are not related to our thoughts; 
not at least in the sense that would assign to them an im-^ 
mediate intellectual origin, though, of course, mediately it 
is all a result of thought. 

For morality, though distinguished from reason, is,, 
nevertheless, legitimately of intellectual origin ; but it is by 
a kind of secondary operation of intellectual force. It is an' 
accepted theory in morals that virtuous impulses, if unhesi- 
tatingly acted upon, will, in every case, insure the virtuous 
action ; and that any attempt to weigh the proprieties of a 
given course is but a pretext for avoiding the virtuous'- 
impulse, which is, otherwise, the peremptory dictate of con-- 
science. In other words, we act, in morality, not under the 
guidance of our judgment exercised on the specific case' 
before us ; not distinctly and evidently from the direction-, 
of our individual intellects ; but under some already estab- 
lished rules, which have resulted from the previous exercise 
of other judgments, or of our own judgments, in analogous 
cases ; and which rules have acquired, through habit and 
recognition, a greater force and sanctity than is accorded tc 



226 MODEEN STATES. 

the judgments of any individual ; wliicli have Ibecome a sort 
of common law of the soul, and which, as such, are removed 
from the influence of casual opinion and accidental error, 
and are respected accordingly as an unconscious code of 
social and civil relations — a code familiar to all, therefore, 
and by which each person may instantly measure every 
act. Thoughts are of influence in this way only when they 
have so continuously governed generations of men, that 
their character as intellectual phenomena has become dis- 
guised, and they have taken on the appearance of habits. 
Then they have ethical force. In this view the decision of 
conscience would be simply a quickly-conceived judgment 
on given cases, in accordance with the laws of widely 
accepted and, perhaps, inherited thought ; not the personal 
thought of the individual, whose conscience acts in the de- 
cision, but the thought, whose results have come to him as 
moral standards, with the common prejudices, and know- 
ledge, and ignorance of the society of which he is part. It 
would not be difficult to show historically tha:t the thoughts 
of one generation, even when only vague fancies, dimly 
speculative theories of human relations, have been accepted 
by later generations as the foundation stones of the fabric 
of conscience ; facts so woven in the texture of our nature, 
that we should be but half made up without them. It was, 
doubtless, a perception of this genesis of the so-called moral 
nature of man that led Aristotle to assign reason as man's 
only guide in all cases, whereas the modern world assigns 
•morality, conscience, religion, which is merely reason that 
has taken the form of habit or prejudice. Aristotle did not 
stop to discriminate whether it were reason in the primary 
or secondary stage of its operation. 

Morality, thus constituted, was the ancient thought. 
That is to say, this was the process by which, anciently, 



COXSTITUTIOITAL mo:n'Aecht. 227 

thonglit was brongM to bear on national life. Only a few 
thought ; they made laws, and from these came opinion 
and nsage— the standards that were the bases of moral 
codes. But, in the enfranchisement of humanity, this pro- 
cess, though not broken up, was so far modified, that one 
thought no longer operated on society as a whole, save 
through some such agency as the newspaper press now fur- 
nishes, and these agencies keep undisguised the intellectual 
character of the influence. 

Tlie original mechanism of the moral force is seen in its 
operation on nations in a primitive condition, as the Jewish 
race in the sacred history, and the Arabs and other Moslem 
races. In modern times, its operation is seen in the impulse 
it gives to nations acting under the influence of some notion 
of the right, or some theory of human relations that is called 
a moral idea. In all these cases the process is nearly the 
same. In the first case, the nation, while retaining the 
physical vigor due to barbarous life, receives, by its faith, 
the benefit of an intellectual progress greatly in advance 
of its own general intellectual status. By this unifying 
process it is made, as a whole, practically equal in intellect 
to him of the number who possesses the best brain. Some 
Moses, or Samuel, or Mahomet, far in advance, intellectu- 
ally, of his race, perceives the possibilities of the position in 
which the nation stands, sketches a scheme of life and 
action, presents this as a law received from on high ; and 
the nation, prepared by its history and nature to believe in 
such communications, accepts all with undiscriminating 
faith, and acts as one man on the perceptions of the great 
thinker. 

This is the operation of the so-called moral force in 
national life. Superstition, simplicity, enthusiasm, and 
fear are the words that most nearly indicate the human 



228 MODEEN STATES. 

qualities by which it acts. Enthusiasm is here a kind of 
moral faith in ourselves ; a faith resolutely uTational, that 
puts aside, on principle, all discussion of the case before it, 
and refuses to contemplate the reasons for the invalidity of 
what we are determined to believe ; the fear is the morbid 
apprehension of the consequences of disobedience to the 
behests of a power believed in as supreme. 

No human energy is more subject to abuse, nor leads to 
greater evil in its perversions, than the moral force in the 
vitality of states. Essentially dogmatic in its operations, it 
exacts adherence to its few formulae with the more tenacity 
the more the progress of knowledge puts them out of rela- 
tion with human intelligence. Taught to fight the enemies 
of their faith, the moral peoples become mere fanatics, and 
treat as enemies all who differ, till their schemes, that were 
conceived as the means toward excellence, become the 
greatest obstacles in the way of its attainment. 

In the East it was recognized as a system that prophets 
arose, from time to time, divinely inspired, whose authority 
became superior to that of lungs or priests, in virtue of its sup- 
posed divine origin ; and this gave a sphere to the accidental 
greatness, genius, or wisdom, the race might produce ; but 
it also opened the door to infinite imposture ; for, when the 
way was shown, it was as easy for a rogue to pretend 
divine authority for his rant, as for a great man to instil his 
wisdom in that guise ; and, consequently, in the land where 
Moses led, because of his genius, any filthy beggar may 
now lead by calling himself a dervish, and assuming the 
extravagance in demeanor that is accepted as the sign of 
divine inspiration ; for, because Samuel and Elijah disre- 
garded conventionalties, and treated alike the great and the 
small of common standards, therefore, whoever disregards 
conventionalities, and treats as equal the great and the 



COJ^STITUTIOTTAL mo:n'Aechy. 229 

small, is another Samuel or Elijah. Things not altogether 
unlike this have also been seen in the West ; for the 
. "republicans" who, in 1871, tore Paris to pieces in the 
name of '89, bear the same relation to the republicans 
of that period that the modern dervishes of the East 
bear to Samnel and Moses. They are the ragged and in- 
sane survivals of a great fact. 

In the operations of moral force the intellectual and the 
physical attributes of a nation act together; but it is a 
blind alliance, an unconscious co-operation. Morality and 
thought are related to one another, as grapes and brandy. 
Thoughts cluster everywhere Like the fruit on the human 
vine ; but they must be gathered, and crushed, and drawn 
off, and distilled to their ultimate principle, before they be- 
come the infrangible precepts of a widely-accepted morality, 
or an ethical common law. And this distillation of the 
thoughts of a people is done in its great brains, and the 
capacity to do it constitutes a man the natural law-giver, 
prophet, or poet of that people ; for these characters are 
the same. Shakspeare, Luther, Lycurgus, Moses, Samuel, 
Homer, these, though widely varying, are the same ; for 
their differences are only the adaptation of the same rule in 
widely varying ages. Each was an epitome of the people 
among whom he arose, and contained in one nature the 
capacity to gather up all the aspli^ations and conceptions 
of his fellows ; and each distilled the common conception 
of many ages to a group of great truths, to which he gave 
an expression so felicitous as to gain them universal accept- 
ance and currency ; in virtue of these, each framed the 
minds of the generations that succeeded him, and lifted 
his countrymen above their cotemporaries. 

From the just relation of the elements considered— the 
physical, the intellectual, and the moral— results what I 



230 MODERN STATES. 

have called the standard of vitality for nations. As there 
is a standard of individual vitality in the human race, all 
above which is vigorous and elastic, and all below which 
is feeble, crippled, and inane, so there is a standard of 
national vitality, and in virtue of their differences in this 
respect — as they are above or below this line — the vital 
force of one will carry it vigorously and triumphantly 
through disasters of the greatest magnitude, and will even 
make it great and prosperous, despite any system or any 
vices of a written constitution ; and the lost impulse, the 
inadequate effort of the other, may seal its fate, despite the 
grandest opportunities and the. most promising facts of 
organization. 

It is not in virtue of the physical glory, nor the intellec- 
tual advance, nor the moral force of a people, that they 
possess the elasticity of a vigorous vitality, which lifts 
above all the consequences of calamity; for the extreme 
development of any one of these elements tends to the 
eradication of the others, and produces infallibly a decrepit 
people. It is not simply an extreme advance on any one 
of these three main lines of progress that constitutes a valid 
national growth and a great people ; but it is the posses- 
sion of these elements, not all equally, but each one in a 
right degree to adapt the nation to the requirements of its 
time, and fit it for the function it has to perform in the com- 
mon human struggle. 

VIII. — Institutions and laws are the contrivances made 
to meet occasions, and for the benefit of the makers ; and 
they are to be preserved only so long as they answer the 
purposes for which they were made, or as they lead to some 
unforeseen advantage, and are not to be regarded as pos- 
sessed of a hallowed character that lifts them beyond inquiry 
into their effect and operation, ^o concession is made by 



COITSTITUTIOITAL MOIN'AECHY. 231 

a whole people that a whole people cannot withdraw. In 
every case, however, the fallacies of revolution and of reac- 
tion will he found in the neighborhood of this phrase— " the 
whole people." As it has been said that every preacher 
declares his own vanity to be the will of God, so every 
faction, every little knot of disturbers, declares itself to be 
the whole people ; and if it agitates with sufficient energy, 
it may raise enough dust to make doubtful how far its 
declaration is true. 

One generation does not regard itself as bound beyond 
resort by the compact made with a previous generation. 
As a legislature, chosen for any term, may repeal any law 
made by a previous legislature, so any constitution of the 
political society that rests upon the consent, acceptance, or 
recognition of the whole people may be continued, changed, 
or abrogated, at the pleasure of the whole. Each genera- 
tion is free to require a new compact, in so far as it is pre- 
pared to fight and to accept the inevitable penalty of a 
worse one if it is beaten. 

It is always implied that the monarchs or other agents 
of authority will exceed the limit of thek powers, and that 
the people will then have the right to resist ; and this right 
of resistance is the popular sanction of the compact. The 
theory of the right is that the king himself is not a king for 
any other purpose than that for which the law has made 
him king, and that, outside his function, he applies not the 
will of the law, but only some personal will of his own, that 
any other personal will may equally oppose. This, as it 
tempts individuals to oppose the agents of authority upon 
opinions of its sphere, which may be erroneous, can become 
dangerous to the public tranquillity ; but it is an essential 
guarantee of freedom, for, without the conception of its 
existence as part of the mental inheritance of the people, 



232 MODEEN STATES. 

authority tends to intrench itself in their very superstitions, 
as seen in Russia. Perhaps this right was of more effect as 
a fact in the times of Magna Charta, in which document it 
is declared to exist, than it has been since; for then the 
great barons and their retainers were efficient organs for its 
exercise. In modern times it is mainly potent as an idea, 
but has also been the ground of great and splendid revolu- 
tions. 

The propriety of the exercise of this right at any time is 
to be judged by reference to the express or implied com- 
pact. It is admitted in every political theory that the sub- 
mission of the people can exceed just limits ; it is also ad- 
mitted that the resistance of the people may be mistaken, 
or too readily excited ; but short of this extreme, there is a 
point at which any people would, in the words of Junius, 
be guilty of ''treachery to themselves" not to resist. 

Resistance should be judged as to whether the evils it is 
expected to remedy are really greater than those it will 
cause ; and the consideration should never be overlooked, 
that it is commonly a precipitate cure for evils that the 
spread of intelligence and clear political ideas tends to re- 
move. War arrests national advance, and if its results 
prove adverse to freedom, it forfeits the growth of hundreds 
of years, and thus puts away, indefinitely, the gain that 
patience and strictly political endeavor might have secured 
in a generation. 

IX. — In its political operation, the church is that appa- 
ratus by which the people first obtain a moral unity and 
standpoint on which they can resist an oppressive ruler. It 
is the association of the people, in agreement, to oppose 
authority on certain points. But emancipated, by this 
means, from the tyranny of physical force, they become 
subject to a so-called spiritual tyranny, and, in turn, revolt 



COI^'STITTJTIOI^AL MONAECHY. 233 

against that. Tliis revolt against tlie spiritual tyranny 
occurs in aR countries, in proportion as the people obtain 
another point of moral support in intellectual unity— that 
is, in the capacity to readily understand how far they are 
in agreement as to facts or principles supposititiously of 
equal interest to all. This second unity is attained, in a 
great degree, in the parliaments, which thus become a com- 
mon standpoint for the popular agreement on all points — a 
sort of family council of the nation, as the church is pre- 
sumed to Ibe a larger council of humanity ; but the parlia- 
ment is partial in its composition, restricted in its sphere, 
and more, even than the church, susceptible to perversions 
from the purpose. 

Another machinery is formed, however, which, because 
it is primarily without intention in this regard, and is un- 
conscious in its political operation, proves more complete 
and effective than either in giving a people a complete 
experience of intellectual unity. This agency is literature 
and the press; and this unity, consequently, exists in 
various countries in exact ]3roportion as the press is free, 
and as the nation is capable and active in the use it makes 
of it ; for in countries where the people are not reached by 
literature, or where the x^ress is subordinate to authority or 
the priesthood, there is no unity of thought but such as 
they permit ; while, where the freedom of the press has no 
limit, and its activity is greatest, the church has no authority 
whatever outside of the strictly religious sphere of the mind 
—and even there controls only women and children ; and its 
right to be heard beyond those limits is asserted only by 
those who live upon the contributions of the devout. 

It is because of this relation that the freedom of the press 
is of vital consequence to the political progress of the 
people. That is the sx)here in which the intellectual activity 



234 MODEEN STATES. 

of a people is brougM forth, and is made effective npon the 
destinies of the nation. It is a kind of permanent automatic 
indicator by which the people come to know themselves ; 
to have a distinct comprehension of their condition, intellec- 
tually and physically — which understanding will be true 
and profitable in proportion as the press is uncontrolled. 



CHAPTER lY. 

REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 

I.— Eepublics occur as a consecLuence of further advance 
on that line on wMch the constitutional monarchy arose. 
Though they sometimes come in other relations, their legiti- 
mate position is next to that form. In the conflict between 
the people and the sovereign, such as we have seen it in the 
chapters on absolute and constitutional monarchy ; in the 
confusion of wars brought about by that conflict, and in 
the pretexts afforded by the factions it produces; the 
sovereign sometimes puts down all resistance, overcomes 
all limitation, and makes himself supreme, and the state 
recurs to earlier conditions, as happened in Kussia. But 
such a result never follows where the tendency to limitation 
is a consequence of the progress of civilization, and the 
growth of the whole people. It may happen, however, that 
the sovereign wiU still be possessed of power when the wars 
have so far raged that the nation falls exhausted and can 
no longer continue the struggle. In this result the throne is 
strengthened, but the popular movement is not overwhelmed 
or lost, and the nation only awaits recovery from fatigue 
and exhaustion to renew the combat. Such a stage has 
been repeatedly touched in France, and there the nation 
seems to recover force and courage once in twenty years. 
In this result the ruler who survives is neitlier a Russian 
autocrat nor the modern analogue of the ancient tyrant ; 
but he more and more nearly resembles the latter as he 
comes later in the progress toward popular forms. 



236 MODEEN STATES. 

Commonly, however, the sovereign does not triumph, 
and does not survive even ; but authority is defeated in the 
struggle, and the one step beyond constitutional monarchy 
results in the disappearance of royalty, and the substitution 
of a functionary regularly chosen in defined ways to 
execute the law. He may be, and commonly is, possessed 
of more real power than the monarch in the later stages of 
the constitutional monarchy ; for the people, feeling that 
they have a sure hold in their capacity to displace him at 
regular periods, do not fear to trust him with that substan- 
tial authority that they had withdrawn from the king, over 
whom they had a less certain control. Some republics 
which, superficially viewed, seem to start full formed from 
the origin of a national history, are, in fact, off-shoots from 
some great struggle in other lands— as the republic of the 
United States formed in the conflicts of British constitutional 

history. 

In a republic, by common consent and recognition, the 
sovereignty is in the people, but the will of the sovereign is 
found, or expressed and applied, by a defined system under 
an organic law. Practically, a republic is a constitutional 
democracy, a democracy in which tlie social or political 
impulses are restrained by the formalities through which 
only they can be made effective. In its fuU freedom the 
energy of popular will tends to extravagant action. Under 
a momentary excitement it will rage like a mountain torrent, 
and, overleaping its proper sphere, respect no limits of 
right, and carry away, in a short course, all that gives the 
social fabric value. In the republic, we may say that this 
force is controlled in its fury, and moves in established 
conduits. The essential character of the republic, therefore, 
is found on a just line between two extremes. On one side 
it tends toward mere democracy, uncontrolled popular 



EEPUBLICAN GOVEEIS-MEITT. 237 

sovereignty, in wMcli all established methods, that secure 
justice and limitation, are overwhelmed by the passion or 
enthusiasm of a moment. On the other side it tends toward 
a supremacy in formalities, which smothers the inspirations 
of the popular will. Democracy is government by the 
simple, dii^ect action of the people, without other control 
than such as their own temperance may impose at the time 
of congregation in popular assemblies, which is generally 
but little ; for their temper is played upon by artful dema- 
gogues interested in one or another course of political 
action ; and the control that a sudden whim may displace, is 
not a trustworthy dependence, so that democracy becomes 
anarchical in any emergency, and the republic falls into an- 
archy on that side when the institutional or constitutional 
restraints are, for any reason, inadequate to their function. 

In one direction that is the danger of republics. On the 
other hand, it is the tendency of forms to multiply them- 
selves, and the public will is lost in labyrinthine intricacies. 
If a people is patient, and law-abiding, and accepts con- 
trol from a recognition of the advantages, it finds itself, 
sooner or later, like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians. 
It falls into the hands of groups of oligarchs, who are be- 
hind the bureaucrats, and it is confronted with the alterna- 
tives of extinction or of the political cataclysm that must 
result from its arising, and sweeping away the whole system. 

Eepublics can only continue, therefore, where the people 
are resolute to be dominant, patient enough to submit to 
proper control, and intelligent enough to know when the 
control is proper and to be submitted to, and when it is 
improper and to be repudiated ; and where the law is so 
distinctly in harmony with the popular mind, that it is 
simply a declaration of the general thought, for then it has 
at once the general assent and support. 



238 M0DEE1!T STATES. 

• In the constitutional monarchy the government is in the 
hands of some one powerful class, or of a combination of 
classes, and every act is viewed as good or "bad solely with 
reference to the interests of this class, or these classes ; and 
from the fact that the classes become correspondingly re- 
sponsible, and feel their honor and dignity involved in a 
proper performance of the function, flows the excellence of 
that system. But the feeble side of this case is that great 
abuses are possible. Every class that can do what it will 
in the state, will often do less than justice toward the other 
classes. Even where it means well, it will contemplate the 
topics, in which all are interested, too much from its own 
point of view. It will not, and, indeed, cannot, so far lay 
aside its intellectual idiosyncrasies as to view critical points 
with the sentiment that inspires other classes; and the 
divergence wiU be worse on all points where it is less cer- 
tain of its supremacy, for where it is stronger it can afford 
to be just. But where it does not mean well, where it is 
selfishly disposed to put all the burdens on others, where it 
contemplates difference in a spirit of arrogant self-suffi- 
ciency, there gross iniquities are practised and discontent is 
the consequence. 

But the republican theory demands that every part of 
the people shall equally influence the acts of the state ; that 
differences with other nations on commercial points, the 
settlement of which can be advantageous only to a com- 
mercial class in the nation, shall not lead to wars for which 
every other class must pay with its money and the lives of 
its sons ; a demand that a whole people shall not be swept 
up to the battle-field to support the cause of an aristocracy 
of their own state, or of some other aristocracy with which 
this sympathizes; and a demand that, as a guarantee 
toward this end, the people shall have a voice proportionate 



EEPUBLICA]^ govee]S'me:c^. 239 

to their presumed importance, or to their number, in deter- 
mining the action of the government on every point of 
consequence to all. 

It is not, therefore, merely a demand for equality of 
civil rights, but for an equal distribution of political power ; 
and the concession of this demand, the departure from that 
system of the constitutional monarchy, which concedes 
superiority either to one race in the state or to a section of 
the people by any other division, the admission of larger 
and larger sections of the people, constitutes the state, 
proportionately, a more or less extreme type of the re- 
public. 

With this system the external facts are the same as 
with any other. Certain men occupy posts of dignity and 
authority, perform, in virtue of that occupancy, certain 
duties, and are paid for their services. This is the same 
whether the head of the state be called king, or doge, or 
president. But the difference is in the theory that is behind 
these facts, and on which the designation is made. It is 
assumed, in the representative theory, that an executive acts 
not for himself but for others by delegation ; that he has no 
will of his own to enforce, but is a mere instrument of the 
general will, as that will is ascertained by the law. 

It is the aggregate all that is sovereign ; but the whole \ 
people cannot operate the government any more than the 
whole twenty persons in one omnibus can drive the horses. 
Some one must drive, as some one must govern ; and 
government in modern states is, in fact, the result of an^ 
agreement that one shall act for all in this respect. But in 
populous countries, and widely-extended states, it is as 
difficult to get the views of the whole people on such agree- 
ment as it is impossible to have government without the 
agreement. Hence arises the representative system, by 



240 



MODEEIS" STATES. 



wMch the people authorize individuals to act for them "by a 
sort of political power of attorney. 

By this method some one is chosen to enforce the laws, 
and some others to watch that enforcement in the interest 
of the people— an arrangement which assumes that the 
primarily chosen persons l)ecome the enemies of the people 
as soon as they are in authority, and their enemies in a 
sense not demanded Iby their oHigations to enforce the law ; 
and these several choices or elections must l)e made in such 
a way that the authority of these many persons can loe 
traced to a sound Ibasis in the wHl and consent of the people. 
II.— Confusion often arises in the statement of the rela- 
tion and place of the sovereignty in a repuMc. Between 
the law and the will of the people, the executive office, 
the representative machinery, and certain a^bstract political 
conceptions, some writers ^eem to get lost. In certain cases 
this confusion of ideas is carried so far that a dispute has 
arisen as to what is really represented in an assembly of 
the nation. M. Guizot holds that deputies do not represent 
their constituents so much as the al)stract results of the 
history of the country— the accumulated capital of political 
impressions and conceptions. Doubtless the people are 
always under the influence of their moral conceptions in 
any civilized state ; but to hold that it is these conceptions, 
and not the constituencies, that are represented in a parlia- 
ment, is to import into the sphere of political responsibility 
so much of opinion and theory, that the plain facts of the 
case must be hidden. Yet a division on this point has 
several times become a party issue in France. In this 
treatise, it is conceived that the people at the point at which 
the events of their history has placed them are sovereign ; 
that representatives are authorized to act for them within 
defined limits ; that the law is the expressed will of the 



EEPUBLICA^' GCTEE^ME^TT. 241 

sovereign, but not his whole will ; and that the execntive is 
a functionary with no other commission than to see that the 
law is enforced and obeyed. 

But if the people are the all-snfficient sovereign quantity 
in a republic, who are the people ? Between the word 
'^ people," in its common use as descriptive of the whole, 
as including all the human creatures to be found in any 
given state, and the word people as a political term mean- 
ing that portion of the population whose will, as determined 
by vote, is declared in the law, and is, through the laws, 
dominant in the state, there has always been an interval ; 
which interval was very wide in ancient times, and which it 
is the tendency of progress to reduce. About one in a 
hundred of the human creatures possessed political privi- 
leges in ancient states— and they, in a political sense, were 
"the people." In the freest modem states the range is 
from about one in twenty to one in five. Many standards 
of citizenship have been made in ancient as in modern times, 
all with a view to define the precise body or division of the 
population that should possess and control the government 
and the destinies of the state; and these standards have 
ranged from those that excluded all but nobles of a certain 
race to those which exclude none but women, and it is a- 
theory now that these also should become part of the politi- 
cal quantity. In the United States, only women and chil- 
dren, unnaturalized aliens, Chinamen and Indians are ex- 
cluded. 

Here again we come upon the notion of equality. 

If we regard the political entity — the state, the sover- 
eignty — as a property, the title of which is in the nation at 
large, then every man's political value is his share in that 
property, the proportionate weight of his opinion and voice 

in its management and disposition. In aristocracies the 
16 



242 MODEEIS' STATES. 

state is like a partnersMp where there is a small nnmber 
of persons wlio own large shares and a large nnmber who 
own small shares, and where, consequently, the voice of a 
single individual in one class may outweigh the voices of a 
hundred or a thousand in the other class. This seems un- 
just, viewed from the standpoint of certain theories ; but its 
justice is to be determined, not so much from its adaptation 
to a certain theory as from consideration of the facts in- 
volved in its history, and still more from the consideration 
whether it is not actually better so for the safety and welfare 
of all ; whether the classes of lesser value are not in the 
political condition of minors, or even as children whose 
demand is for an indulgence that will lead to their own 
harm, as well as to the harm of all others. In democracies 
it is held that every man' s share in the property is, and 
should be, equal ; this, however, is very apt to result, and 
in practice, does actually result, in the production of a 
double inequality ; for, first, ignorant men, under the 
impulse of their passions only, are more numerous in all 
states than men under the influence of reason ; and, if the 
t^ystem is effective, it discriminates by the majority principle 
in favor of ignorance, and thus makes an inequality to the 
prejudice of the public good ; but if the system is not 
effective, and generally it is not, the notion of giving 
power to the whole people is defeated, and a depraved and 
infamous few, playing upon the ignorance and passion of 
the many, govern all. 

It may be said at this point, that, if a system is bad, its 
defeat is good ; but no enacted falsity can be other than 
evil in the structure of a state. Every defect in the relation 
between the life and the law opens an interval into which 
the enemy insinuates himself. It is argued that to make 
every man a part of the political quantity does away with 



EEPUBLICA2T goyee:n'ment. 243 

ignorance, and so elevates the many loy giving tliem political 
importance as to oWiterate those characteristics which, in 
other systems, keep them on a lower scale. 

This is the same as to argue that men can be made 
industrious hy estahlishing that they shall have a certain 
support from the state whether they lahor or not. This 
plan does not overcome ignorance. On the contrary it does 
away with the natural endeavor of men to elevate them- 
selves by instruction, because, as they esteem themselves 
to be elevated already, they do not feel the pressure 
of that motive. This is merely measuring facts by fan- 
cies. It accepts the scheme of a rainbow as a plan for a 
bridge. 

Until it can be shown that the human nature found in 
democracies is different from the human nature found else- 
where, this view can only obtain countenance with the en- 
thusiasts of equality. Equality, undoubtedly, gives to each 
person who was before below the line of division an increased 
opinion of his own importance ; and where there is a moral 
tone, the consideration that he has become a participant in 
the sovereignty may inspire the purpose to become worthy 
of it. Perhaps this happens with one in ten thousand. 
With all the others the consideration adds to conceit, not 
to value ; and the only effect is that he who, by the want 
of capacity to excel, was kept below, is now, by the law, 
put on the same level with all the rest. His only purpose 
is to remain there, no matter by what means or at what 
cost, for he comes to esteem equality as the great ideal 
good. This produces in him individualism, which is the 
political operation of egotism. In order to hold his station 
in the political fabric, he will consign every other individual 
of the community to slavery. He will see the freedom of 
the state perish, and will help to enthrone a sovereign tyrant, 



244 MODERIT STATES. 

if only that tyrant has the art to lure him with the promise 
of equality. 

All that theoretical falbric, from which the view is held 
that each individual should be of equal political value, 
rests upon the pretence that men are actually equal in 
nature, ''are created equal." What man is in nature, and 
what he is in the state, are facts that have no necessary 
relation to one another. But is there, even in nature, this 
equality 1 If there is a fact that may loe accepted without 
argument, it is that human heads and their contents differ. 
Without education the best organization may fail; but 
without a fit organization, no education whatever can pro- 
duce either talent or virtue — of which an idiot is the extreme 
evidence. 

However beautiful in theory, therefore, is this notion 
of the equality of men, no political fabric can be based 
upon it with any hope to realize it in practice, for the laws 
and institutions that establish equality nominally, give, 
practically, the preference and an unequal advantage in 
the state to its worser elements. Some sections of the people 
will be of more consequence in the state than other sections 
This is an inevitable principle, and the choice must be 
therefore for quantity or quality ; whether the superior few 

f shall govern the inferior many, or the contrary ; and it is 
only certain that if equality is ordained, the many and the 
viler will rule. 

Civil equality, the right of each one to the equal pro- 

' tection of the law in his person and property, is an indis- 
putable requisite in every organized society, l^atural 
equality does not exist. Social equality can only be 
attained by the degradation of all to the standard of the 
most worthless. Political equality, the pretence that each 
one is of equal value in the state, is a mischievous error 



EEPUBLICAN G0YEEI?^ME]5fT. 245 

founded upon a false conception of the true end of political 
association ; and the state founded upon that conception 
can only Ibe sound while its machinery in practice defeats 
and falsifies its primary law. This it does in all states that 
stand upon universal suffrage. 

III. — Universal suffrage, so-called, which must be ac- 
cepted as a necessary part of the theory of popular sove- 
reignty, gives a vote to every creature who could be called 
upon to defend the state in battle ; and that these facts 
should be thus related seems just. But in practice, man- 
hood suffrage does not seem to overcome the evils against 
which it is the presumed remedy. It does not defend the 
state from the domination of restricted divisions or classes, 
whose interest is not identical with the interest of the whole 
people. On the contrary, there is some reason to believe 
that it practically delivers the people into the hands of an 
oligarchy of party tricksters, ''bosses," so-called, and 
swindlers ; that it is a political fallacy. 

It assumes that it is a necessary part of political liberty 
that a man shall have the right to take part in the per- 
formance of certain functions, though ignorant how to 
acquit himself of any part of the duty which will thereby 
fall to his share ; that he shall sing in the chorus without 
any knowledge of music ; that he shall paint pictures 
though not an artist, or make shoes though not a shoe- 
maker. In such misapplications of men to service, there 
would only be bad shoes, bad pictures, or bad music — 
which might not be ruinous. But he has the same right to 
go into the powder magazine, though ignorant of the pre- 
cautions that are necessary there with regard to fire ; the 
same right to foist himself into the navigation of the ship 
when she is on a lee shore, and the horizon is white with 
the rising storm. His ignorance may, therefore, not always 



246 MODEEIS" STATES. 

concern merely himself. He may drive the ship upon the 
rocky coast, or blow up the whole community ; and yet it 
is the theory of universal suffrage that this supervision of 
incapacity over capacity is a necessary condition of the 
freedom of states. In order to have your state free you 
must put in operation a principle that ensures its ruin ; to 
save it from the oppressor, you must pursue a course that 
lays it helpless at his feet. 

Participation of the whole people, Iby universal suffrage, 
in every act of the nation, is the assumed guarantee against 
the classes ; hut a device that, to protect the people, ruins 
the state, goes too far ; it accomplishes its result at too great 
an expense ; it is not an economic adaptation of the force to 
the purpose. Moreover, it does not fulfil the purpose— it 
does not protect against the classes ; it only hands the state 
over to another class ; it changes the class, and changes it 
for the worse. It saves the people from the aristocrats, and 
hands them over to the demagogues.^ 

It is held that the state is the people's property; that 
their prosperity and happiness are the objects sought in aU 
the political activities ; that, therefore, they are the safe 
custodians of authority, because "the people will never op- 
press themselves nor invade their own rights." But this is 
an error. They always oppress themselves and invade their 
own rights. N'ot consciously, however. They really imagine 
that they are oppressing some other. They cannot judge 
the ultimate consequences, scarcely the immediate conse- 
quences, of political measures ; and they either contemplate 
calmly action taken in their name by their agents, or they 
go wild with enthusiasm over acts that can produce only 
their own subjection. At such times it is death to hold a 
contrary opinion. 

This is what may happen when the servants of the 



EEPUBLICAN GOVEENMEIS'T. 247 

people are honest. Commonly, however, they are dishonest ; 
and, when they are, the people are like sheep in their 
hands, for they cannot effectively apply the vigilance 
necessary for their protection. As in the fsible the lark 
destroyed the elephant, so the people are helpless against 
cunning rogues : for the lark first induced the crows to pick 
out the elephant's eyes, and as the blind monster, feeding 
on the scanty herbage, wandered helplessly in search of 
water, she induced a colony of frogs to accompany her to 
the edge of a deep pit, and there croak with all their might, 
and the elephant, led by this customary indication of the 
whereabouts of water, fell into the pit. So the people 
enact their own ruin, deceived by their recognition of cus- 
tomary guides. 

The one essential of a republic is, that the government 
shall not be held adversely to the people— shall not be the 
possession or the property of a class ; that no group of the 
people, separated from the rest by any distinctions, shall 
in the name of the nation act their own will, and deal with 
the common country as if it were their estate. Yet univer- 
sal suffrage does so surrender the nation to a class of pro- 
fessional politicians. 

The principle of opposition to class supremacy is equally 
good against the rule of a lower class as against a higher, 
and the danger of modern republics is in that direction. 
Universal suffrage concedes political power to every male 
creature of a certain age ; political equality establishes that 
any rogue who runs away from the battle but comes up 
promptly on election day, is of more consequence in the 
state than the greatest soldier if the latter fails to vote, and 
of equal consequence with him if he votes ; the recognition 
of the supremacy of the majority, not of the whole number 
of voters, but only of those who actually vote, discriminates 



248 MODEEN STATES. 

against all wlio albstain ; and under the joint operation of 
these principles, and through the pride, hostility, and 
prejudice which they call into play, it comes ahout that all 
the classes which were once dominant are handicapped, 
and the control of the state falls into the hands of a lower 
and a lower class, until the absolute source of authority is 
the lowest class of all. 

From this follows the limitation of the representative 
system in republican government. As soon as the many 
are able to put in office the men of their own choice, these 
wiQ be persons chosen from their own number, ignorant, in- 
capable, possessed with that spuit of rapacity for gain that 
is the common disease of poverty ; and, with an administra- 
tion of this character, the best system in the world will fail 
to secure to the nation the advantages of good government ; 
and the government will necessarily either fall to pieces or 
be put down because it has become mere thievery. 

Government is the control of the acts of the many by 
the acts of a designated few ; and the acts of the few have 
behind them either armed force, or the moral support of 
the whole, since, without one of these, control would be 
impossible, because any single section of society is more 
numerous than the persons who govern. All, therefore, are 
in the hands of those who govern ; and if it is possible that 
rogues can possess themselves of this machinery, the whole 
society is in their hands. One of the essential requisites of 
a good government, therefore, is that it should be difficult 
or impossible for rogues to insinuate themselves into im- 
portant places ; and governments may be called good or 
bad as they differ in this respect. But it is a fact before all 
' others that universal suffrage smooths the way for rogues. 

IV. — If universal suffrage is not to become a mere mis- 
chievous superstition, and the ruin of the cause of the 



EEPUBLICAN GOVEENMENT. 249 

people, it must Ibe contemplated from another standpoint 
than that commonly taken. It must no longer "be regarded 
as the benevolent extension of a privilege, but as a more 
than Spartan obligation of duty. Each man must not be 
conceived as permitted, but as compelled to vote, for the 
evils of universal suffrage are the consequences not only of 
the vote that is given to one, but also of the fact that some 
other one is, in each case, practically excluded from the 
polls by the vote thus given. For every brutishly incapable 
voter taken into the circle of political vitality, an intelligent 
and capable voter is crowded out of that circle. It is not 
said here that he need be crowded out, or that it is other 
than his own fault, but the fact is stated only ; and it is the 
fact, not the impression which produces it, that injures the 
state. If society recognizes every individual's right in this 
respect, it must demand his service also ; because it is not 
from a consideration of the claims of any man personally 
that this right exists or is conceded, but it is a recognition 
of each unit as an integral part of the political quantity, it 
is an enlargement of the political basis ; and the purpose of 
it is defeated if, when the state has accorded the privilege, 
men are permitted to choose whether or no they will exer- 
cise it. If the whole decide that a certain number of per- 
sons constitute the political body, no one person should 
have the right to change that number by the withdrawal of 
himself from the quantity. 

If every male creature, of a certain age, has a right to a 
voice in the national councils by his vote, then there is a 
correlative right in the society to compel him to exercise his 
right. As to certain public obligations, the public wiU 
applies compulsorily. It is presumed in all states that 
every individual can be forcibly required to contribute, in 
proportion to his wealth, to the support of the state, and 



250 MODEBiS' STATES. 

that lie can be called upon, similarly, for military service ; 
Ibnt tMs supreme right of suffrage is regarded so lightly, in 
one respect, that it is thought a man may follow his plea- 
sure as to whether he will use it. 

If, in the interest of justice, the power to govern is taken 
from the superior divisions and given to the whole, then the 
whole enter not merely upon a privilege, but upon an obli- 
gation. It cannot be permitted to abdicate ; because it has 
displaced the power that governed previously, and has done 
this on the understanding that it would govern itself in the 
room of the power displaced ; but if it fails to do this, then 
the government practically lapses, and the state falls into 
the hands of conspirators. If, in the admission of the many 
to political privileges, the few are permitted to abstain, then 
universal suffrage is not an enlargement of the political 
basis, but only a change of political power from one to 
another of the parts of the people. Power is then taken 
from the cultured, the intelligent, and the wealthy, and 
given to the needy, the ignorant, the credulous, the pro- 
fligate ; and it cannot be pretended that this is not an injury 
to any state in which it happens. 

For the vile admitted, the good are excluded, and society 
thus moves, with double speed, the downward way ; and 
against this it should be protected by a provision that 
should in all cases go with the concession of universal 
suffrage — a provision that all persons entitled to vote shall 
be held to tlie exercise of their right, as they would be held 
to military duty ; that they shall be compelled to vote 
under the imposition of penalties, the penalties to be col- 
lected like taxes, and to be in proportion to wealth. If 
the people are to govern themselves, they must give to the 
public concerns as much thought as the kings gave when 
they governed alone, or as the oligarchs give where they 



EEPUELICAN GOYEEKMENT. 251 

govern; and eveiy individual mnst give his equivalent ' 
share. It is not by acts which are contemplated as privi- 
leges, but by duties, that freedom is advanced. Indifference, 
such as induces the citizen to fail in his vote, is the treason 
of republics. 

For the continuation of republics the people must co- 
operate ; and if they persistently fail to do so, if by moral 
influences, or by the laws, it is found impossible to compel 
regard for the public welfare, the social condition of that 
people has not reached the stage at which they can sustain 
the republican system ; enthusiastic visionaries have pushed 
progress in reforms too far; and the government must 
coUapse to a form adapted to the needs of the community, 
or it will fall, by manoeuvre and chicanery, into the hands 
of those who govern in the name of the people, but not for 
the people. 

States that stand on universal suffrage must provide that ^ 
all men shall vote, or degradation, decay, and ruin, inevitably 
foUow. They may tax the non-voter, or they may impose, 
as a penalty, that whoever shall fail to vote at a given num- 
ber of elections shall be disfranchised by that fact ; for in 
proportion as men become indifferent to the result in ordi- 
nary cases, they treasure their power to be able to affect the 
result when they choose. Or the vote in any election might 
be contemplated, not as to whether it was a majority of the 
votes cast, but as to whether it was a majority of the whole 
number of persons entitled to vote, votes not cast being ' 
counted as if given in favor of the retention of what exists. 

But this is not yet conceived as a possibility in modern 
states ; and universal suffrage, as operated without such a 
corrective, is what must be contemplated in its results, in 
all states where it is accepted as part of the political appa- 
ratus, and where it is the element which presumably controls 



252 MODEEN STATES. 

in that great vital function tliat determines the issue of party 
operations. 

Y. — In a repulblic Ibased upon universal suffrage, the 
theory of equality, pushed to its extreme, prevents any such 
obvious operation of divisions of society, as we have touched 
in considering the dominant elements in the constitutional 
monarchy ; but there must be a dominant element wherever 
there is a conflict, and in republics this dominant force is a 
political party. Parties take the place of classes. 

Every theory of the republic necessarily implies some 
such solution of difficulties as in the actual condition is 
imperfectly supplied by party action. It is desired and 
proposed by the theory that there shall be no such divisions 
of the nation as are indicated by class lines ; but there are 
classes wherever there are human creatures, and classes, 
as natural facts, tend to a spontaneous resurrection even 
where it is pretended that the political contrivances have 
most completely buried them out of sight ; for a class forms 
itself upon such bases as those mere arithmetical divisions, 
the majority and the minority. Somebody must deter- 
mine, in the variations of opinion, what opinion shall pre- 
vail, and shape the proposed public policy or law ; and as 
this is, in theory, the right of the whole people, and the 
whole people cannot agree, it is accepted that what the 
greater number sustain, shall stand ; and the republic rests 
upon the crude notion that for such purposes a fraction over 
half of the people is the whole people. Such a numerically 
superior division becomes a dominant element. This, in at 
least one aspect of its operation, is a negation of the concep- 
tion laid down as the first basis of republican aspiration, 
which is that the whole shall not be sacrificed to the will of 
any part. By this it becomes the law of states that the 
whole shall accept, as an absolute rule, the wiU of a part, 



REPUBLICA]^ GOVEEI^MENT. 253 

provided only that tlie part is a little greater than half of 
the whole. Indeed it provides, by party operations, that a 
division equal to a trifle more than one quarter shall rule 
all ; for as a party that is in a majority rules the nation, 
and thus all are submitted to a little more than half, so a 
majority division of a party, Iby the caucus system, rules 
that party which rules the nation, and thus the nation' s fate 
is determined in critical occasions by a small minority. By 
other peculiarities of party operation, two or three or a 
dozen persons are commonly the really eflicient force in 
declaring the ^' will of the people." Not even the narrowest 
oligarchy in the world does worse than this ; and this re- 
sults only accidentally from party evils. 

Conflicts of opinion on political ideas are the necessities 
of political progress; and while they arise in all states 
where men are in any degree emancipated from the control 
of authority, they must, of course, be absolutely free where 
the people are sovereign ; and political parties are organiza- 
tions of the people for the purposes of such conflicts. Party 
action, therefore, covers the whole field, from the first politi- 
cal assault upon authority to the conquest of a liberty so 
extreme that anarchy results unless liberty is put down. 

Authority and liberty may be regarded as the extremi- 
ties of a sort of political scale. With the most absolute 
authority there is no liberty. Every existence is absorbed 
in the idea of the state, or, more practically, is lost in the 
will of the ruler. Men become parts of a unity so compact, 
so severe, so repressive, that individuality disapi)ears. 
With extreme liberty on the other hand, the state is an 
agglomeration of men so loose that it scarcely holds to- 
gether. Indulgence of personal impulses is universal, and 
the resistance to the pressure of power is found equally at 
every point. Individualism disputes the very touch, nay, 



254 MODEEK STATES. 

the very existence of tliat general will which is conceived 
as subordinating each to the common advantage of all. 
Each would have no law but his own opinion. Between 
these extremes there is a point at which the pressure from 
either direction is equalized, at which it balances in more 
or less constant tranquillity ; and at the equilibrium thus 
found is the safety of states and the happiness of peoples. 
But this point has not a fixed relation to the extremities. 
It is not necessarUy at the middle, nor nearer to one extreme, 
nor nearer to the other. With different peoples, or with 
the same people at different periods, with war or peace, 
with one or another climate, the point of equilibrium varies. 
There is no point arbitrarily fixed at a certain distance from 
either extremity to which it can be declared that authority 
may reach, or at which liberty must stop, and the attempt 
to assign such limits is the common cause of the failure of 
constitutional schemes ; for there is no rule in regard to 
such a point, save that it is movable. To outline a scheme 
of polity, and say that liberty shaU be absolute as to so 
many gradations in the scale, and authority supreme as to 
so many others, is to require that the state shall not grow, 
or that there shall be no changes in its social condition, or 
that war shall never come, or that commercial enterprises, 
or new discoveries shall not enrich classes that were poor ; 
or else to ensure infallibly that in the occurrence of any of 
these common events the scheme shall fail, and be supple- 
mented and overgrown by successive political expedients. 
But if the race is given, and the state of its civilization, its 
social condition, the point may be proximately named 
beyond which neither authority nor liberty can safely go ; 
but the designation will only be good for a time, since 
growth will change every circumstance upon which the 
validity of such a judgment will depend. 



eepublica:^ goveettmeis't. 255 

Political conflict is always at tlie point of pressure on 
the scale thus imagined. An equilibrium, more or less 
satisfactory, is estaMislied as tlie result of every trial of 
strength ; a point is determined at which, for the time, the 
assertion of authority and the demand for liberty are at 
rest. But disputes always follow as to the conditions of the 
settlement ; and the quarrel is opened again when either 
side has recovered strength and conceives the opportunity 
favorable. As the cause of the conflict there is always some 
natural operation of the political elements ; some aspiration 
of the people, more or less just, or some repressive endeavor 
of the dominant part ; and the strife, whatever may be the 
special features of the case, always proposes to move 
the point of contact nearer to one or the other of the ex- 
tremities. 

Movements to and fro in the scale between these ex- 
tremes are described by special words, of which one of the 
more prominent in our times is reaction. Recovery, by 
authority, of ground previously lost, is called reaction, and 
the reactionaries are whoever urge or support or manoeuvre 
such recovery. In this term, therefore, it is implied that 
the primary movement is the other way. '^ Action " politi- 
cally is such a removal of the boundaries as enlarges the 
limits of freedom, and this agrees with the view hitherto 
presented, that authority at first holds the entire domain, 
and that the natural operation of political activity is toward 
its reduction. 

As applied in politics, the word reaction is of course 
figurative, and is derived from the mechanical operation of 
physical force. If force is exerted to overcome resistance 
in a given direction, the mere withdrawal of that force, the 
mere discontinuance of its operation, constitutes that which 
before was only resistance, an active force operating the 



256 MODERN STATES. 

otlier way ; and this may eitlier replace the Ibody at the 
point from which it was first moved, or, through an impulse 
of elasticity, carry it beyond that point. In politics, there- 
fore, reaction is any consequence of pressure when the 
pressure is withdrawn or fails ; and in this interpretation, 
the fury of the French revolution, the very reign of terror 
itself, was a reaction against the oppressions of the old 
regime. There was a mad hostility to institutions, and a 
savage assertion of gentle principles, which has Ibeen 
thought inconsistent, but was not. Man, as an individual, 
had been completely lost in the old system — sacrificed to 
institutions ; and the reaction was against institutions, and 
for the assertion of humanity at the expense of any number 
of lives. But the word reaction, as politically used, has 
lost this general sense, and is specially restricted to move- 
ments in the other direction ; because it is recognized that 
the primary activity is from the people, and in their favor, 
and that reaction is necessarily its opposite. 

yi. — Radically, there are but two parties ; and if prin- 
ciples could always be seen fairly, and stripped of acci- 
dental issues, there might never be any further division of 
the people than into two parties ; but there are always im- 
portant shades of difference in the views honestly taken on 
every great occasion, and craft and chicanery increase the 
number of these differences ; and thus each party falls into 
several factions. But it will be sufficient to consider parties 
under these three heads : 

1. — Conservative parties. 

2. — Liberal parties. 

3. — Coalitions. 

ISTaturally, conservative describes the purpose of those 
who would retain the political fabric as it stands, without 
regard to whether it favors the upper or lower classes ; but 



EEPIJELICAT^ GOYEETTME^T. 257 

this word also is localized in politics to a very great degree ; 
and its use, as opposed to liberal, indicates that the support 
of what exists implies, oftener than the contrary, the sup- 
port of a fabric that can only change in favor of liberty. 
To this there is a partial exception, however. In all hier- 
archical governments, the conservative party sustains priv- 
ilege and exclusive law, as opposed to the movement from 
the people which assails these. But in popular govern- 
ments the democratic party is the conservative party, the 
upholder and defender of the liberty actually secured, and 
the other party's effort is against this liberty, and to secure 
privileges and monopolies at the expense of the general 
freedom and right. It moves in our time toward the erec- 
tion of a moneyed oligarchy. But the first stated is the 
more general division of the parties to the political con- 
flict. 

Persons with vested rights in high places and the func- 
tions of government, as sovereign princes, their families and 
dependents, nobles, landed gentry, priests, dominant politi- 
cal classes, possessors of great monopolies — the rich gener-- 
ally — those who have thriven in the present order of things ; 
in short, all who have the better share in the division as > 
made by the actual social and political lines, are con- 
servatives.. On the other side is the main body of the^ 
people, who, finding greater happiness in freedom, aspire 
to its general extension ; and these are led, generally, in 
their political activity, by men of talent from other spheres. 
of life, who are either pure and patriotic and sincerely 
believe that the good of the nation demands that the point 
of equilibrium should be moved in favor of the people, or 
who are interested in their personal advantage, and go over 
to leadership of the people because they cannot secure it in 

their own element. Sometimes the leaders of the people; 
17 



258 MODEEI^ STATES. 

arise from among the people tliemselves ; Ibnt these Ibetray 
the popular cause nine times out of ten. They obtain 
office and some personal importance for themselves, and 
conceive thereupon that the main ^'popular demand" has 
been satisfied. They are like the leader of a certain 
Florentine revolt, who, when he had obtained a pair of 
shoes, thought that all the popular grievances were re- 
dressed. All the leaders of the French revolution who rose 
from the people to station and title under Napoleon, were 
as ready to put the foot of tyranny on popular rights as 
were the nobles of the old system. 

Evidently the line of division between the parties is not 
absolute, and cleaves the body of the nation at different 
points in its different conditions. Often in countries where 
the laws are reasonably liberal, points of difference will 
arise that will rally nearly the whole mass of the people on 
the conservative side, and leave in support of the supposed 
popular interest only some surly faction of irreconcilable 
extremists. Sometimes, where the whole spirit of the law 
has continued repressive for centuries, a demand for change 
will be so eminently and clearly just that the great body 
of the conservative element will be on the popular side, 
and resistance will be left to the few absolute believers in 
"the good old times." 

Conservatives indeed, as well as liberals, are moderate 
and extreme as they have greater or less faith in their re- 
spective principles. Some are always reactionary, and 
would withdraw the liberties the people already possess ; 
others would yield cautiously to change, the necessity of 
which was well established. Advanced liberals were for- 
merly called radicals ; but this word is now used for liberal, 
and its former place is taken in part by the word ''irrecon- 
cilable," used of parties which hold their extreme views 



REPUBLICAN GOVEENMENT. 259 

with sucli fanatical intolerance of difference that they can- 
not live on fair terms of rational opposition with any party 
that denies their theories, but regard all such as enemies to 
Ibe extirpated. This was the character of the men of '93 in 
France, who reasoned only with the gnillotine while they 
had the power; and of the communists of '71, who endea- 
vored to make a cataclysm in the capital from which they 
were driven. But this ferocity only appears when the case 
between sections of the people has gone beyond the limits 
of political division, and when oppressed classes arise, not 
to dress the balance of merely political difference, but to 
glut long smothered social revenges. They are practically 
slave insurrections. 

Far the greater number of conservatives oppose change 
without regard to any other fact than merely that it is 
change. Their condition cannot be improved by it, and 
they do not regard any other consequence. Their weight 
in society, their power in the legislature, their interest in 
the courts, and in the administration of the executive func- 
tions, are given to sustain the organization as it is, and to dis- 
tract and beat down the impulse for modification. They are 
not always satisfied with a fair battle, and do not restrain 
their temper in the conflict. They conceive that it is not a 
struggle over abstract constitutional problems, but a personal 
fight. The balance of society has placed them at a favor- 
able point, and any change may place them less favorably 
at least, and perhaps disastrously. Their property may 
be in the issue, and the inheritance of their children. They 
infer possible consequences of the propositions of their 
opponents, and they impute these as intentions. Change 
which may be the destruction of their little sinecures, they 
call the destruction of society. Brigands, cut-throats, 
anarchists, are the mildest terms they can find for men who, 



260 MODERN STATES. 

for the moment, are perhaps the advocates and apostles 
of a pure and noMe national impulse. Resistance that 
thus goes beyond the limit of reason and enlists the pas- 
sions of classes, maintains a political fabric sometimes far 
beyond its natural date, but fails at last. As well might a 
little fish in the falling stream fancy that, by entangling 
himself in the root of some old tree and holding on there, 
he could stay the outgoing tide and keep to those feeding- 
grounds indefinitely, as for men of this stamp to fancy their 
resistance can stay revolutions. The fish would find, at last, 
that he had only put himself high and dry in a condition 
of things impossible to his respiration ; and so the conser- 
vative finds that the resistance that was legitimate at first is 
a crime finally, and his high place becomes a scafibld ; for 
in proportion as conservatism puts away the day of change, 
that day tends to become terrible ; and the extinction of 
abuses is seen to be possible only in the extirpation of 
the classes through which they operate. This is the true 
significance of the history of the guillotine in France. 

It is a general rule that all obstruction to the application 
of principles which the general intelligence recognizes as 
good principles, is due to vested rights, caste, tradition, and 
the influence of the classes that thrive by these ; but 
naturally this rule applies more at one than at another 
stage of society, and more against changes of one sort than 
of another, and ranges from the point where such resistance 
is mere fatuity to the point at which the proposed conces- 
sions to the people go so near to the disintegration of the 
state as to require that all who care for the country shall 
become conservatives. 

As the conservative parties stand by the facts, and view 
the theories only in their agreement with, or hostility to, 
the facts, so the liberals are inspired by theories, and tend 



EEPUBLICAK GOVEENMEI^T. 261 

to accept the facts or oppose them, not upon a rational con- 
sideration of their advantage, but according as they find 
them adjustable to the rule of the theory. From this 
essential character of the parties we see readily the abuses 
into which they run from the extreme indulgence of their 
respective tendencies; on the one hand an adherence to 
facts that the moral or common sense of the world repudi- 
ates ; on the other hand a visionary extravagance ; a de- 
mand for change, based on views of political propriety that 
are not merely dreams, but oftener lunatic fancies. An 
absolute liberal can, on one hand, warm himself by the fire 
that burns him out of house and home, and on the other 
hand every fire-fly's signal is to him a lighthouse. 

Liberals of this sort, who proceed with the precipitation 
of insanity toward ends that are good in themselves, are the 
ruin not only of states, but of progress— the real enemies of 
safe and valid advance. In one August night of French 
l^story— a night full of philanthropic purpose— was de- 
stroyed, by the friends of freedom, freedom's greatest 
opportunity in the world up to that time ; and, in that 
night, the republicans, abandoned to themselves, made 
Napoleon and the military tyranny an ultimate necessity. 
In our own history, the war that grew out of the anti-slavery 
agitation, and the consequences of that war, have done 
more harm, political and social, than slavery did in two 
hundred years ; and its tendency in some gloomy hours 
has been to make forty millions of slaves where there were 
only four. 

Liberal parties have their legitimate sphere in that point 
■ which we have caUed the neutral strip on the moral frontier 
—the space between the law as it is and the law as it is con- 
ceived it should be, and as a division of the people propose 
to make it ; and their legitimate activity is in working to 



r\ 



262 MODEEIT STATES. 

strengthen and extend this popular conviction of the right 
against the law in order to secure such a balance of political 
power for their theorj, that the law is changed to accord 
with it. 

But in times when the accumulated abuses have not yet 
scored up a heavy reckoning for settlement — in times that 
are not revolutionary — ^the political conflict is conducted 
moderately on either side, and the issue is commonly a 
compromise. Compromise is the agreement of the parties 
to accept less on either hand than what the ideal perfec- 
tion of their respective schemes might logically demand. 
Liberals accept the change they have struggled for, shorn 
in some degree of its fair proportions, and crippled with 
conditions in the interest of the conservative element. Con- 
servatives who have opposed the change their adversaries 
threatened, agree to yield, and discontinue their opposition 
on condition that their adversaries stop short at half of what 
they demanded. Both parties act in a spirit of prudence, 
inspired more by their apprehensions than their hopes. In 
anarchy which would result from the persistent assertion 
of the extremes, the conservatives see that they may lose 
not only what is now demanded, but also all else that they 
would preserve ; and out of anarchy comes military despot- 
ism, in which all that the liberals have already secured 
and all that they can hope to gain is trampled under 
foot. Compromise, therefore, is the result of a wise and 
natural apprehension, and not of cowardice, as the howling 
dervishes of liberalism are wont to declare. It accepts 
what may be safely had now, and relegates further con- 
quests to the future rather than imperil, by blind and 
extravagant persistency, what is already secure. Compro- 
mise, therefore, takes a middle ground between the par- 
ties ; ground on which it is generally possible to gather 



EEPUBLICAN GOVEENMEI^T. 263 

enough voices to control the ordinary differences in any 
state. In any compromise, therefore, there is a change of 
the lines of party division, and out of this change arises 
coalition, which is the combination for a common purpose 
of parties ordinarily opposed. Ttiere are principally two 
coalitions. JSTear to the line of division between liberals 
and conservatives there are large numbers who do not hold 
either creed with deep conviction, but move from side to 
side, as their intelligence or prejudices approve or disap- 
prove projects on foot. All these act together as a third 
party on compromises. 

By any movement toward a compromise of this nature, 
the extremes on either side are separated; an extreme 
element of liberals and an extreme element of conser- 
vatives, extravagant in views in proportion as the lines 
of the middle party are extended, are left to shift for 
themselves ; and these extreme groups, animated by fierce 
hostility to the common foe, form a second coalition; a 
union which does violence to every honest political con- 
ception, because it arises, not in the fair advocacy of any 
principle, but in hatred, or in such worse motives of corrup- 
tion as the division between them of lucrative offices. The 
instinctive suspicion with which such a combination is re- 
garded arises from the fact that party commends itself to 
general appreciation as the means of securing the national 
welfare ; but with such a coalition, this presumed pui-pose 
is shamelessly disregarded. 

VII.— Parties are substitutes for the armed insurrections 
that controlled government in former times ; they operate 
the right of resistance on constitutional bases ; they con- 
duct and direct the legitimate movement for change, espe- 
cially of republican systems. It may be said that the 
republican system has tamed and domesticated the wild 



264 MODERN STATES. 

beast of revolution, and that it exercises its control by party 
action. But parties are subject to abuses in proportion to 
their advantage. 

Without party, insurrection is a necessary condition of 
the control of authority, for authority always takes a view 
of its compacts with the iDeople different from what the 
people take, and invades the popular right. Insurrection, 
however, is more irresponsible than authority, and the 
remedy is very commonly worse than the disease. But the 
honest portion of the people can control party if they will ; 
and they can control it just in proportion to the extent in 
which the political basis is narrow. Their control becomes 
more difficult as the base is widened to universal suffrage ; 
and in that direction it becomes more and more easy for 
party leaders— demagogues— to frame political issues in 
utter disregard to the national welfare, but with a view to 
their perpetuation of the dominance of their party, and, of 
course, of the oligarchy of demagogues which manoeuvres 
the party machinery. Against such a dominancy the 
people revolt at the poles ; but unless the revolt is silent 
and almost unconscious, the nimble adventurers will go 
over in advance and will always be found in the front ranks 
of all ''reform movements" and "honest men's parties." 
If a people cannot rid themselves of this disease of popular 
government, there is little hope for them ; and this is the 
condition of things in some American cities, where, what- 
ever way the people vote, they can only choose between 
alternative conspiracies of adventurers ; where they have 
little more real control in their politics than they have in 
the choice of the Emperor of China, and where the govern- 
ment is literally and absolutely in the hands of an oligarchy 
of nimble- witted thieves. 

Parties are very little inspired with the spirit of political 



EEPUBLICATT GOVEENMEITT. 265 

science ; but they are supposed to Ibe fertile in the cultiva- 
tion of political art. Political art, in its legitimate sense, is 
the application to common facts of the truths of political 
science, and the disentanglement of the complications of 
political facts in the light of these truths ; but "the arts of 
the politician " are viewed in an unfavorable sense in pro- 
portion as the ignorance of the people compels a low and 
mean appeal to their interest and attention. If the political 
power resides at a point above the average of intelligence, 
the appeal is to reason, and there is a conception of the 
applications of political art ; if the power is found below 
that point, the appeal is to prejudice and ignorance, to base 
thoughts and appetites, and politics no longer involves 
legitimate skill and culture, but only the poor devices of a 
contemptible trickery ; and from the unconscious recogni- 
tion of this fact the name of politician becomes a term of 

reproach. 

Party abuses are mainly these : tlie tendency to substi- 
tute, in political conflicts, the party and party purposes for 
the nation and national purposes ; the tendency to extend 
party operations beyond the limit of the political facts, and 
to determine, by political methods, differences that have no 
just relation to politics ; and the substitution of an oligarchy 
of leaders, bosses, organizers, and similar persons for the 
people, as the sovereign force. Universal suffrage, which is 
not practically satisfactory in its operation where it is really 
effective, is, in fact, most objectionable, through the circum- 
stance that in virtue of tliis third abuse it completely defeats 
the operation of the most advanced republican ideal of the 
sovereignty of the people. 

YIII.— Local "leaders," who acquire an individual 
supremacy, either in virtue of superior talents, or by the 
arts of the demagogue, are inevitably produced in greater 



^^^ MODERN STATES. 

or less degree in proportion as the democratic character of 
the system is more or less extreme. These '^ leaders," 
whose advice is sought by the majority, and whose opinions 
are accepted as final, are the autocrats of their small sphere 
and local disputes are determined by theu* word as definitely 
as though it were the decree of an Asiatic prince. 

For causes that are not local, for the determination of 
difierences common to many neighborhoods and to a whole 
people, the merely local magnates come together and form 
a junto, which, in its turn, is supreme ; and which also, in 
its turn, does not act on the democratic theory that every 
one of its members has an equal voice, but which accepts 
the will of the few men of the number who can most suc- 
cessfully flatter, soothe and please, or domineer the many. 

Such juntos are the recognized machinery for preparing 
the action of parties in democracies. It is the fiction that 
they are chosen by the voters of the party ; but this, which 
indeed is, perhaps, at one time true, and later is put forth 
as a solemn pretence, soon becomes so obviously false, as 
to be put aside with derision by the simplest-minded per- 
sons. These 'headers" name one another; that is, some 
one who is supreme in the confidence of his herd of voters, 
names his intimates, his cronies, or his creatures. If there 
is any occasion in which the formality of an election is 
necessary, they make the result what they please. 

Groups of self-constituted magnates of this character, 
standing on the fiction that they act for the people, deter- 
mine the action of great parties on both sides of every 
political conflict. They declare the policy on which the 
party shall act, and name the candidates who shall carry 
out this policy ; and all that the party of either side does at 
the election is to confirm and ratify the action previously 
taken by this junto, or committee, or convention. All the 



EEPIJBLICAK GOYEE:JfME]^T. 267 

parties are operated by tMs process, and one or another of 
them, prevailing at the election, becomes "the state,"— for 
the people who, in the theory of self-government, nominally 
create at the election a government satisfactory to them- 
selves, really put in power the conspiracy that issues from 
the intrigue of one or another junto of leaders. 

Voting in this light is analogous to the shout of the 
multitude— the voice of the people in a royal city when a 
new king is proclaimed from the balcony of the palace. 
Originally that shout was a vital part of the process of 
choice ; and as it was given or withheld, it ratified or re- 
jected a selection made. But it became a mere formality, 
and lost its adverse force, and the voice of the people, 
expressed by ballot, is moving down a similar incline. 
Sarcasm has been freely bestowed upon the case in which 
Louis Napoleon, having possessed himself of the govern- 
ment of France, permitted to the people the formality of 
expressing their approval ; but the oligarchs of conventions 
constantly practice the same process in our own country. 

Every clamor for the greater extension of the power of 
"the people" in the state issues from these juntos, not 
from the people ; and its origin is the hunger on their part 
to increase their power. By the extension of popular 
authority, as thus comprehended, power is taken from some 
recognized official body and given to these irresponsible 
cabals. Thus at one time it was proposed in the State of 
New York to give to "the people" the election of judges, 
and it was done. The result is, that the judges, who were 
formerly chosen by the governor of the state, are now 
chosen by juntos of professional politicians assembled in 
the backrooms of groggeries. 

These groups of leaders or bosses, therefore, are the 
"aristocrats" of the democratic systems. They are the 



/ 

268 MODEEIS^ STATES. 

"bodies that control. They come into existence in virtue of 
the general principle that the people, confident of their 
ignorance and incapacity to govern, give themselves np 
instinctively to advisers and leaders; and the practical 
political difference between aristocracies and democracies 
is that, while in both sorts of states the action of the whole 
people will be controlled by certain groups of persons, in 
aristocracies the groups will be men of wealth, and great 
families, and education— groups of defined character and 
position ; and in democracies they will be crafty and im- 
pudent adventurers. 

Every democracy is, therefore, operated on the assump- 
tion that democracy is an impossible form; that govern- 
ment by the people is only possible in so far as the people 
do not govern, but surrender themselves to the advice and 
guidance of leaders. In its origin this is only the natural 
human impulse toward dependence upon persons of superior 
intelligence, and even then it implies a negation of the 
democratic theory ; but as it goes further, it becomes a 
complete substitution of a few for the whole, with the fiction 
that the few act in the name of the many ; a fiction that is 
necessary to keep within the law which declares that the 
many shall rule. 

In aristocracies there is no pretence to respect the will 
of the many. They are thrust aside. In democracies they 
are thrust aside also, but with the pretence that what is 
done is done by them through their agents whom they have 
' supposititiously chosen. In both systems they are equally 
dispensed with; but one puts them aside honestly— the 
other cheats them. 

In every particular, save one, this spontaneous product 
of a democratic system, the oligarchy of political machinery, 
behaves itself as an aristocracy behaves itself in those 



EEPUBLICATT GOVEEXMEIS'T. 269 

governments wMcli recognize tlie legal and political superi- 
ority of a class. It arrogates to its members the possession 
of all lucrative offices, it administers tlie government, as- 
sumes the general direction and control of tlie people. It 
is as if, when the law removed from its privileged position 
an aristocratic class that had been accustomed to direct 
popular thought, a real vacancy was left in the political 
scheme to be filled by whoever might come first to hand. 
But there is one function filled by an aristocracy that this 
mushroom growth does not meet. An aristocracy gives 
steadiness to the operation of the political machinery. Like 
the great fly-wheel of an engine, it is a reservoir of accumu- 
lated power, and supplies an impulse of continued strength 
that relieves the strain upon the initial force. Its definition 
as to who shall stand above and who below is recognized 
and accepted. Morally this may be odious, but practically 
it is advantageous. Some one does stand above and some 
one below in every scheme, and if the arbitrary designation 
fills the upper places well, and the throwing them open fills 
them with robbers, the arbitrary designations of aristocracy 
are better for the people. So far from giving steadiness the 
analogous class in a democracy keeps the ojoeration of tho 
machinery in perilous uncertainty. As their privilege, sta- 
tion and authority are imknown to the laws, they repudiate 
all at any moment it pleases their convenience to do so, and 
disappear in the body of the people and are as impalpable 
as a gas that has only existed to ofiend the nostrils. They 
cannot be found when wanted for any occasion they do not 
care to meet. 

Aristocracies recognize that privilege and position in- 
volve obligations ; but this is not recognized by the adven- 
turers who come to the front in the political melees of 
democracy, who recognize no limit to the depredations they 



270 MODEET^ STATES. 

practice in the pnrsuit of tlieir common industry against the 
public purse. One of the most certain results of this is the 
peril to freedom ; for the ^Deople, displaced from the man- 
agement of public concerns, lose their political habits and 
perceptions ; yet the body which had taken this duty on it- 
self disappears in any emergency, and the people are left with- 
out a protecting organization or the capacity to create one. 

We contemplate with a scornful pity the ancient nations 
who permitted their fate in great occasions to turn on the 
decision of the augurs ; but have we good reason for this ? 
Augury resulted from the agreement to refer the doubtful 
point to the will of the gods as expressed by some event 
supposed to be above and beyond human control — ^like the 
flight of birds. Only the gods, it was conceived, could 
affect such a circumstance ; and the people, therefore, 
broadly accepted that an event determined one way or the 
other, as the birds flew to the right or to the left, was deter- 
mined by the gods. But they overlooked the process of 
the application to human facts of the event that was beyond 
human control. How should it be known in the absence 
of any natural significance, that, as an answer to a given 
inquiry, the gods said ' ' yes ' ' if the birds flew to the right, 
and '^no" if they flew to the left? Why might it not be 
no if to the right, and yes to the left ? By whose knowledge 
should the principles be ascertained for the interpretation 
of the divine response ? If the people ever inquired thus 
far, they were probably told that this was a detail ; that 
the broad principle was the only point worth attention ; 
and, in fact, that this sort of curiosity indicated a dangerous 
and punishable want of faith. 

So the point was really determined by the priests ; and 
whatever class the priests were chosen from, imposed its 
will under cover of the divine response as found, presum- 



EEPUBLICAIT GOVEET^MEIS-T. S71 

ably, in the fliglit of l)irds ; and the people were cheated 
into consent. Angnry was, therefore, an early species of 
appeal to ultimate authority ; that presumed source of all 
authority — the will of the gods. 

Appeals of the same nature were made to the oracles, and 
answered hy the priests, who were evidently bribed as com- 
monly as are the cheap rogues with whom we fill our State 
legislatures ; and in a notable instance the right, superior 
to law, upon which Sparta wished to act, was determined 
by Athenian money ; as the right in our American States 
is often determined by the heavy purse of rich corporations. 

Our great ''appeal to the people," by election, is sup- 
posed to be a reference of the point of difference to a power 
beyond the reach of interested persons or parties. But 
then, it is always one of the interested persons or parties 
that frames the issue and "interprets the answer"— 
that it counts the votes. Although the purity and satis- 
factory character of this appeal is conceivable, yet in its 
practical operation it is as farcical a mockery as the appeal 
by augury ; and to doubt a fraudulent count is regarded 
as a crime now by those in whose interest the fraud was 
practised, as it was anciently a heinous sin to doubt the 

augurs. 

IX.— Individuals are commonly unrestrained by repres- 
sive laws in that precise degree in which the political power 
in any state is in the hands of the people, and this has led 
to the designation of republican government as free govern- 
ment, and the apparent assumption that there was no free- 
dom in any other form. Indeed, the word "liberty" has 
been so freely used as an interchangeable name for the 
republic as to have given rise to the notion that a republic 
is in the hands of the enemies of the people if it undertakes 
to limit in any degree the action of any person. 



272 MODEEI^ STATES. 

In the conflict against anthority, wMch, as we have seen, 
is the universal political impulse through all the ages, the 
period when a nation, at last, so far oyercomes all inimical 
impulses as to secure and estahlish, as an undisputed 
right, the republican system, is a time which has a peculiar 
relation to the idea of liberty, as then, for the first time in 
its history, all the presumptions of the law, and all the 
relation of facts, is in favor of that aspiration, where before 
they were against it. 

There is a point at which, in regard to liberty, govern- 
ments may be grouped into two separate classes ; and re- 
garded as the two slopes of a political watershed, on either 
side of which the currents tend in contrary directions. On 
one side there is so little liberty that restraint is the rule ; 
and on the other side there is so little restraint that liberty 
is the rule. In the growth of states from an extreme 
assertion of authority toward an extended liberty there is, 
therefore, this turning point with a critical relation to the 
two extremes. In all differences anterior to this point, the 
assumption is in favor of authority, and the onus is upon 
those who would prove that liberty, as to any given act, 
may be allowed ; while to all subsequent to that point, the 
assumption is in favor of liberty, and authority is compelled 
to show its needfulness. In the first case control of the 
people is the general assumption of the existence of the 
state ; tbey are restrained in nearly the whole circle of life, 
and the few acts as to which they are free are named and 
defined ; in the other case, freedom is the general prin- 
ciple, and the acts as to which restraint is deemed neces- 
sary, are specified. In both cases the principle of the state 
is declared to start from the moral condition of the people. 
On one hand, it is urged that the natural impulses of the 
people must be kept down ; that they will go wrong in 



EEPUBLICA^ GOYER^MEN'T. 273 

proportion as tliey are left to themselves ; on the other 
hand it is held that the impulses of the people are not to 
evil, but only to activity ; that the so-called evil is only evil 
as judged by the measure of certain false standards ; that 
it is the standards that are wrong, not the impulses ; but 
that in the small sphere where it is experimentally shown 
that the people run to evil, restraint must be imposed. 

Are there, in this sphere of necessary restraints, other 
acts than those classed as crimes ? And what are crimes ? 

In the classification of acts as crimes there are wide 
differences of opinion. Civilized nations scarcely differ as 
to the character of those acts which constitute the graver 
offences, but the differences are at the point where criminal 
and permissible acts merge into one another ; and where an 
act often has no other character of criminality except that 
it is forbidden under threat of punishment. It thus be- 
comes, in some countries, a crime to do, and in others not 
to do, the same act. Popery, libertinism, the sale of liquors,, 
are crimes in the Puritan standard ; and in Catholic coun- 
tries either have no legal character, or are virtues. 

Making a just distinction between acts that are only 
criminal as they are contrary to some arbitrary standards 
of law, and acts that are crimes in the common apprecia- 
tion of civilized communities, are not these common crimes 
the only acts that a society may justly forbid to its mem- 
bers ? On the side of the claim of liberty the affirmative is 
held ; but the existence of political communities is based 
on other necessities than such as relate to the offences of 
individuals against one another, or against the common-, 
opinion of right ; and the society would seem to be justly 
in possession of the power to act on its members in any way 
necessary to further any of the objects for which it exists. 

Indeed it may be doubted if authority has ever been exer- 
18 



274 MODEEI^ STATES. 

cised in any direction where tliere was not primarily occa- 
sion for it ; Ibut the occasion is abused to accomplish class 
objects or personal objects, or any other objects than those 
that are legitimately the state's ; and aspiration for liberty 
has gone blindly in its endeavor not to remedy an abuse of 
authority at the given point, but to forbid at that point, or 
even everywhere, the exercise of any authority whatever. 
It has thus commonly remedied one evil by preparing 
another. 

In 1789, for instance, Frenchmen did not doubt, and 
have never doubted, that the French government was the 
best of which the world had any experience ; but they saw 
to what a condition society and humanity had come under 
that government — ^presumably the best of any ; and thence 
leaped to the notion that government was an error and a 
wrong, and hailed with delight the argument of Rousseau 
to this effect. They did not reason that it was only their 
own government that was at fault. It was all government. 
Embittered by misery, misled as to the cause by vanity, 
they became the easy victims of a great delusion, they fell 
into a kind of lunatic fury in which they destroyed what 
the occasion required them to correct, and then endeav- 
ored to reconstruct all from the bottom ; to build up a 
national house of cards with flimsy scraps of the rights of 
man, furnished by a romantic imagination. In this the 
French only did, with their characteristic energy, what 
every other nation has done in a less degree. 

At the origin of what we may call modern society this 
process of the limitation of an authority that was, in the 
beginning, necessarily without limit, had already made 
great advances ; and the characteristic of political vitality 
in civilized peoples is their endeavor to make these limita- 
tions positive, and to define the lines so strictly as to avoid 



EEPUBLICAX GOYEE^^ilEXT. 275 

those collisions "between the political elements in states that 
destroy the halance and peace of communities ; and the 
unsolved prohlem of this ever-recnrring endeavor is : How 
can a people reconcile the greatest possible freedom of 
individual action with the safety of society as to order, 
public vMue, industry and intelligence, and the safety of 
the state as to internal contributions and foreign foes ; at 
what poiat may the line be drawn so that we shall not have 
to choose between an untrammelled life and no government, 
or a good government and stringent repression of many 
proper and natural individual impulses ? 

Degrees of individual liberty, which are the necessities 
of good government where order and peace prevail, are 
utterly inconsistent with that absolute authority which 
must be wielded by some power or person when violence 
has to be met, as in war ; and as every society wishes peace, 
but must expect war, and as the needs are so different for 
these different occasions— the greatest difficulty of lawgivers 
and the greatest danger of free governments has always 
been at this point. Such an office as that of the dictator- 
ship in the Roman constitution— a recognized recurrence to 
primitive sovereignty— attests the experience of the ancient 
world ; and the modern experience is exhibited in the 
catalogue of suspended constitutions. 

Liberty is imperilled in a different way by dangers that 
have a different source, as by the encroachments and inva- 
sions of authority on one hand, and by the abuses of per- 
sonal freedom on the other. Invasion of its limits by 
authority, is the common and obvious danger of freedom in 
all systems and at all times ; but a danger peculiar to free- 
dom in popular governments is the tendency to an extreme 
assertion of individual liberty. In governments of privilege, 
the privileged few undoubtedly domineer and oppress the 



276 MODEEIT STATES. 

many; but in free goyernments tlie many improve upon 
tlie instruction. 

In order to secure tlie advantage and ameliorations of 
civilization, peoples primarily endure restraint, and propor- 
tionately yield their liberty ; and all later state-craft is an 
endeavor to reconcile with civilization constantly larger and 
larger degrees of freedom ; and liberty is desirable and a 
benefit only within the limits in which it is consistent with 
the preservation of civilization. Beyond those limits, and 
in the whole sphere in which liberty and civilization are in 
conflict, liberty is an evil, and its existence is to be depre- 
cated by all nations not in a savage state. 

Indeed, the essential conflict exhibited as to this point 
in all history is between civilization and freedom. The bar- 
barians were free, the restrained people were civilized ; and 
these are always the necessary relations. Civilization can 
only exist where there are order, subordination, control, 
recognized and accepted relations. Freedom, in its absolute 
term, is the negation of all these, and is therefore barba- 
rian. These are the extremes, the poles. Every state 
stands on a compromise of these extremes, made nearer to 
the one or to the other, so that it is less or more free and 
less or more barbarous ; and the aim is, and has ever been, 
to reconcile the largest possible freedom with civilization, 
to make a state that shall be sufficiently civilized and suffi- 
ciently free ; and nations practically, and philosophers 
theoretically, have equally diffiered as to where the tine 
balancing point lies. It is only certain that it differs for 
all and for each one in every age, and that the constant 
tendency of history is to change the limit so as to enlarge 
the sphere of freedom at whatever hazard. 

But it should never be forgotten that the disintegration 
of authority to which the conflict against it directly tends, 



eepublioa:n' goveet^mei^t. 277 

leads to the abyss; for states cannot exist witliont the 
principle of authority, organized with strength adapted to 
the occasions of the time ; but this strength may be greater 
or less as the civilization and intelligence of the people is of 
such a character that they themselves perceive the advan- 
tages of obedience to the laws, and by assent render un- 
necessary the application of force. 

But it will be found upon observation that the advocates 
of extreme freedom of action do not mean by the word 
liberty what that word conveys to one who reasons with 
regard to the just limits of politics. 

Liberty is the permission that the state accords to the 
individual to act on his own volitions. Commonly used as 
a positive term, and in opposition to a definite negative of 
the absence of liberty ; it is none the less a relative term ; 
that is to say, liberty is not present or absent absolutely, 
but relatively ; it is greater or less in different states, ac- 
cording to the system and theory on which they are organ- 
ized. It is never altogether absent. There is no state in 
which the people are not free as to some acts ; and from the 
little liberty they have where they are least free, every 
gradation is to be found up to that large indulgence of 
individual impulses which only discriminates as to their 
sanity, or as to their inclusion in recognized categories of 
crime. "^ 

* Montesquieu touches this point in Book XL, Chap. II., " Esprit des Lois," 
as follows : " No word has acquired more various significations, or impressed 
the human mind in so many ways as that of liberty. Some have taken it for 
a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical 
authority ; others for the power of choosing a superior whom they are obliged 
to obey ; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to 
use violence ; others for the privilege of being governed by a native of thtir 
own country, and by their own laws. For a long time a certain people thought 
that liberty consisted in the usage of wearing a long beard. Some have 



278 MODEE]^ STATES. 

Bentham says that ''liberty is the most equal distribu- 
tion which can be imagined of political power." Men can 
imagine an equality in the distribution of power greater 
certainly than exists anywhere, or than ever did exist ; and 
until a distribution be made equal to that imagination there 
can be no liberty, if Bentham' s definition be accurate. Dr. 
Lieber, in his lectures on civil liberty, has also employed 
the word as the designation of a political system, and even 
a species and stage of civilization ; and has magnified its 
importance so as to dazzle his eyes, and prevent considera- 
tion of liberty in the necessary stages of the growth of 
society. 

But this view, that at first seems to result from a con- 
fusion of ideas, is not illogical. It is, in fact, an instance 
of that intellectual operation by which we habitually con- 
found the name of an efiect we wish to produce with the 
name of the instrument by which alone we can produce it. 
It is the experience of mankind that the liberties of the 
people are safe only when they are not accorded from 
above as favors, but result from the fact that the applica- 
tions of public force are made by those whose regard for 
liberty is greatest ; when power is in the hands of the people 
themselves. From this experience it is an easy step to con- 
found the existence of liberty with the existence of govern- 

attaclied this name to one form of government exclusive of others ; those who 
had a republican taste applied it to this species of polity ; those who liked a 
monarchical state gave it to monarchy. Thus each people has called Liberty 
the government conformable to its customs and inclination ; and as in republics 
the people have not so constant and so present a view of the causes of their 
misery, and as the magistrates seem to act only in conformity to the laws, 
hence liberty is generally said to reside in republics, and to be banished from 
m.onarchies. In fine, as in democracies "^he people seem to act almost as they 
please, this sort of government has been deemed the most free, and the power 
of the people is confounded with their liberty," 



REPUBLICAN GOyEE:N^MENT. 279 

ments administered by tlie people. With antlioritj in the 
hands of the people, the only danger to liberty is from its 
exaggeration ; and though that is at last the greatest danger 
of all, it is not commonly perceived. This accounts, there- 
fore, for the manner of speaktag referred to ; but to com- 
prehend the subject clearly the more precise definition is 
necessary. 

Cicero has given, in the simplest possible words, the 
primary conception of liberty ; "For the essence of liberty 
is to live just as you please." ]^ow, if everybody may 
live just as he pleases, what will become of society ? If 
we suppose a people possessed of such a high morality 
that the fleshly and selfish impulses do not inspire their 
acts, this may do ; but the existence of such a people is 
an Utopian fancy. Their country is not to be found on 
any map. Political science, to have any value, must pro- 
ceed upon the consideration of human creatures as they 
are ; and taking men as they are, it is plain that where 
*' every man does what is right in his own eyes," there can 
be neither order nor peace, justice or security. 

Thus, the ages of absolute liberty, the times when men 
were free to do all things, were not particularly good old 
times ; they were the times that went before the proper con- 
ception of government ; and if a man was free to do any 
act, his stronger neighbor and enemy had the same free- 
dom, and there was no public force to ensure him safety in 
Ms life and possessions. Government changed all that rigor- 
ously and extremely in the first organization of states ; and 
the hold thereby taken upon the facts of man's life it loosens 
later as he is judged able to restrain wrong tendencies, or to 
exercise Ms liberties with proper discretion. He aspires, 
however, always to the earlier condition of escape from 
all restraint, for he sees the fair side only of that picture. 



280 MODEE]^ STATES. 

For this plain reason, there is behind every just concep- 
tion of liberty the conception of its limits, the recognition that 
it cannot extend to the whole range of human acts. An ex- 
amination of the elements of that conception will exhibit 
the just relation of liberty to all political schemes. 

Every society, every political community, stands on the 
assumption that the existence of men in communities is 
desirable. Opposed to this assumption is the idea of the 
so-called ' ' natural liberty." ;N"atural liberty depends upon 
the personal power of the individual ; it is enjoyed or lost 
in the indulgence of those violences the correction and pre- 
vention of which is the main service that the state does to 
the many. Natural liberty, therefore, is yielded and given 
up in favor of that greater good — the organization of the 
political community. It is the estate of primitive humanity, 
part of the capital which is put into the hands of the govern- 
ment to be administered for the benefit of the whole ; no 
individual has a claim to any portion save by designated 
instalments which the law accords as occasions may justify ; 
and the instalments thus paid out are not natural liberty, 
for the natural condition has passed away, but civil or 
political liberty. 

Coercion of individual impulses is the origin of states. 
Liberty, therefore, in its first extreme, is absolutely sup- 
pressed by the formation of the state ; and that sort of origi- 
nal or "natural" liberty can only come under discussion in 
a train of ideas which disputes the advantage of the exist- 
ence of men in communities ; but that, as we have noted, is 
untenable ground, because every community assumes the 
advantage of its existence as a primary postulate. As re- 
lated to politics and civilized communities, we can only dis- 
cuss such liberty as exists, or can exist within a state, there- 
fore not the moonshine of so-called natural liberty. 



EEPUBLicA^ govee:n-mext. 281 

It was argued even Iby Constant tliat there is a sphere of 
life in states as to which man is naturally free, and over 
which authority can only be exercised by invasion. '' ]^at- 
urally free" involves, as we have observed, a protest 
against society as denying some liberty that men possessed 
before its organization ; but if man accepts the benefits of 
society he prefers the social to any other condition, and 
must take these benefits qualified by the disadvantages of 
control ; and to still claim the incidents of an earlier condi- 
tion is to class himself as outside the pale of the actual 
society. If he pertains to the society, its authority over 
him is as complete as the circumstances may require, and 
is remitted only as the circumstances justify ; and if he does 
not pertain to the society, its right to control his acts is 
limited only by its power and magnanimity, for he is an 

enemy. 

Consequently : liberty within the limits, liberty consist- 
ent with the existence of the state, and mth the various 
requirements of that existence to be ascertained as facts, 
liberty under just laws ; this is assumed to be the full form 
of any rational demand for further liberty. If any demand 
other than this is made for the extension of liberty, it is a 
demand which goes behind the existence of the body politic, 
and puts a formidable weapon into the hands of those arch 
enemies of freedom— the savers of society. ' ' Liberty under 
just laws," therefore, assumes the existence of Laws and 
requires that they must be just. Justice in laws touches 
the fact that they must be made by an authorized power, 
as well as their character when made. 

The conception of duty and right given above is derived 
from the political and not the moral standpoint ; and the 
commor error of the case results from tlic introduction here 
of the moral standards of right. Moral motives are as- 



282 MODEEIS' STATES. 

sumed as a just ground of political action, which is the 
same as to assume that military operations should be con- 
ducted in accordance with astronomical theories. Burla- 
maqui, in an examination of the grounds of authority or 
sovereignty as founded on force, finds that force is not a 
motive sufficient to oblige the will ; that, therefore, there is 
no reasonable obligation to obey, and ''the default of obli- 
gation implies the default of right." If we are not under 
(moral) obligation to obey, there is no (moral) right to com- 
mand. Here are the ideas of will, obligation, duty, —all, as 
used here, strictly moral terms. States are founded on the 
suppression of the will ; against the protest and resistance 
of that very will the impulses of which are here counted as 
sufficient against their authority. They are not founded to 
satisfy, as is assumed, but mainly and primarily to over- 
come the greater part of that impulse ; and the only prob- 
lem that touches the will in relation to politics, is whether 
a point has been reached at which the restraint may be 
relaxed consistently with the interests of society. If it has 
not, then the obligation upon the will must be the wholly 
rational consideration that the ferocities of war, the horror 
of insurrection, murder, injustice, all the evils that may 
menace communities, are not to be lightly invoked against 
what exists under the impulse of theories that people have 
some abstract right to resist. 

X.— If the existence of the state is desirable, all that is 
necessary to secure that existence is just ; and hence follows 
the validity of the facts constituting the form in which the 
national impulses have been realized under the pressure of 
necessity. All the structure of states is based on force or 
the idea of force ; on the control of individual impulses by 
an authority which exercises compulsion if we do not 
recognize its right. In all the early steps the exercise of 



EEPUBLICAK GOVEENMEInT. 283 

albsolute control over every act is rigid, and death is tlie 
general penalty of every departure. Later, as the occasions 
for this rigidity pass away, the assertion of authority is less 
enforced, but men consent to accept its decrees with the 
condition involved that the failure of consent is a violation 
of the agreement, and restores to the original condition if 
authority is then capable of the exercise of its original 
power. Every failure of obedience thus becomes a chal- 
lenge to the trial of this point. 

Obedience to the laws, the necessary condition of the 
existence of order, can only be counted upon with certainty 
where disobedience involves some peril or detriment the 
apprehension of which in the mind of the individual out- 
weighs the pleasure or advantage of the Ulegal act. Popu- 
lar consent to even the commoner laws of every society, 
though spoken of constantly as founded upon intelligence, 
virtue, or religion, is in fact compounded of a considera- 
tion of the certainty of punishment, and of the disadvan- 
tages of the disgrace and inconvenience, if we compel that 
use of force which would follow the refusal of our consent. 

Superior force is therefore the only valid ground of 
civil obligation, because none other is to be depended upon 
for all occasions. Men ''consent," as it is said, and, of 
course, are not immediately forced into every act of obedi- 
ence to law ; but they consent very much as a person taken 
into custody by the officers of the law consents to go quietly 
with them on his way to jail. It is very much against his 
will to go ; but he knows that refusal or resistance will only 
put the officers under the necessity of using a force tliat will 
be peculiarly disagreeable. Superior force is not, therefore, 
contemplated as always in operation, save as it operates on 
the apprehensions of men. Although the force may not be 
always apparent, nor even always acting, a very slight con- 



284 MODEEE" STATES. 

sideration will assure us that we are influenced Iby the 
consciousness that it may at any moment come into opera- 
tion. Society does not restrain one man from murdering 
another by the constant physical application of so much 
preventive force ; hut it is because men know that the 
power of the whole society is directed to inflict the greatest 
conceivable punishment on the murderer that life is so com- 
paratively safe in well-governed communities. And this is an 
illustration of the commonly inappreciable yet regular way 
in which the force of the whole society is applied to main- 
tain its frame and order. No force is felt ; no pressure is 
experienced, so long as all moves regularly ; but the appli- 
cation of the force follows departure from the regular 
course ; and to argue that this force, which is in constant 
operation, but not apparently, and comes into apparent 
operation only as necessity arises, is therefore not the real 
civil tie, is the same as to argue that the sun is not above 
the horizon because the roofs and walls of our houses hide 
it from our eyes. 

'^ Authorized" power involves one of the great problems 
in politics. If it is conceded that the state may act on the 
individual in any way necessary to further the objects for 
which it exists, we are then only in possession of an abstract 
rule, and the trouble is here, as elsewhere, in putting this 
rule honestly in practice. Who are to determine what pur- 
poses have paramount importance at any given time, and 
what pressure it is necessary to exercise in the pursuit of 
these purposes? In the states that are operated by the 
machinery of elections, the majority of the electors is held 
to be the power that determines all doubts ; in other states 
dominant classes exercise this function ; and in states 
where all progress has failed, and anarchy has only been 
prevented through the seizure of power by a personal ruler, 



EEPUBLICA^ GOYEE^^ME]^T. 285 

that ruler claims to detennine in these cases. And each is 
right in its turn— the majority, the aristocracy, and the per- 
sonal ruler ; hut it is clear that in the name of all these 
there are false pretences. There is an apparent majority, 
the result of fraud, whose will it is right to resist ; there is 
an aristocracy that outlives its true relation to the state, and 
claims to rule when the reality of power has left it ; and 
there is an ambitious rogue who makes a conspiracy to 
seize power on the pretext that he must save society from 
an impending anarchy, apparent only to himself and his 
supporters. All these manoeuvres to defeat the legitimate 
exercise of the national sovereignty, organized in the interest 
of ambition and cupidity, make diflacult the acceptance of 
principles that are plain and simple enough in theory. 
They complicate also the true problems of politics by a 
false issue ; for it ceases to be whether the people shall bow 
to authority, but whether they shall bow to a force that 
frauduently holds the position of authority. Liberty is im- 
possible without control properly exercised, for the stronger 
will invade the rights of the weaker ; but to live under an 
authority not legitimately established, is only another form 
of that arbitrary control of the stronger to avoid which all 
the rules are made ; and whether the people's liberties are 
secure in any conceivable case does not turn upon the foma 
in which control may be applied, but upon the point 
whether the authority is legitimately derived from the will 
of that element of the society which is the people in the 
political sense ; the element that is either actually or con- 
fessedly dominant. 

States in which the theory of liberty, as to the exercise 
of defined rights subject to legitimately derived authority, 
is nominally accepted, are the larger number; but in nearly 
all, through such perversions of the political machinery, the 



286 MODETK^ STATES. 

theory is all there is of it ; and authority exercised in the 
name of the collective unity is, in reality, a weapon of op- 
pression wielded by some class or caste of nobles, priests, 
or money lenders ; or, on the other hand, license riots in 
the name of liberty; and pandering demagogues, eager 
only to filch the public treasure, urge on a depraved 
majority, and cover their villainies with the clamor of free- 
dom or reform. 

XI.— That the laws shall be ''just," with the implica- 
tion that the contrary character will give fair ground for 
resistance, becomes practically a fruitful source of trouble ; 
for this is the point at which the moral idea of right is 
opposed to the political idea which is stigmatized as ''ex- 
pediency." Politically that is right which exists, or is done 
in such accordance with the facts and circumstances of the 
case that greater evil to individuals and to the whole 
society must result from the effort to change or resist it 
than from consent and acceptance ; for it thus becomes a 
duty of all who regard the welfare of the state to support 
and not to oppose ; and that which it is a plain duty to do 
politically, it is right to do politically. 

Enthusiasts with "good intentions," and the schemers 
for political importance who assume the guise of enthusi- 
asts and of moral leaders of the people— these two characters 
that are the sources of the greater part of the evils that 
aflict all states— thrive by the perversion of this plain idea, 
and build their fame or their fortune on the notion that 
some moral opinion as to the nature of a law shall oust all 
the political reasons on which it stands ; that for this opinion 
of a sect, or a coterie, a nation shall be urged on to ruin, to 
learn eventually, perhaps, that the whole series of ideas of 
which that moral opinion was a part, was founded in ignor- 
ance and delusion. Millions of men have been slaughtered 



EEPUBLICAT^ GOVEE^METTT. 287 

in religions and moral wars by men wlio believed they did 
the service of God ; bnt if there is any fact clear, it is that 
they only served some pope or high priest. 

From the standpoint of this view of the law it is easy to 
perceive all the relations of that commonly made distinction 
between law and right, or law and jnstice ; a distinction 
made in a spirit of hostile and even savage criticism of 
society, and based on the assumption that law and right, 
or law and jnstice, should be convertible terms. Law is 
recognized right ; right that the society concedes and agrees 
to protect. Eight spoken of as distinguished from law is an 
ideal view of human relations, that a part of society de- 
mands shaU be added to the recognized right of the law, 
and the recognition of which in that way another part of 
society opposes ; and the conflict for and against the recog- 
nition, for and against the change of the law as demanded, 
for and against laws that shall declare the recognition of 
new social or political relations, is an important part of the 
social and political activity. 

Law should, it is conceivable, keep pace with thought 
as to what is right. But conceptions of justice are abstract, 
and the national mind must necessarily be in advance of the 
law as to these ; for the law must also have its distinct re- 
lation to facts— and to the plain truths derived from facts, 
and therefore can only be framed on ideals of justice in so 
far as facts are not an obstacle, or as the facts that actually 
are obstacles are of little importance, and such as the 
society readily consents to cast aside for the greater advan- 
tage of a law in harmony with its conceptions of justice. 

In consequence of its relation to facts, law is never in 
full relation with the progress of thought ; for the law, as it 
stands, is presumably the last ascertained expression of the 
will of the whole, or the last compromise effected between 



288 MODEEl^ STATES. 

the different wills of the various classes ; and the most ad- 
vanced thought, or any thought in advance of the law, is 
the notion of a class, or a party, or a few persons. Natu- 
rally, it is the duty of society to deny the validity of new 
ideas, to oppose them as revolutionary; for insomuch as 
the law is the standard of recognized right, its permanency, 
its invariahility, is one of its advantages and excellencies ; 
Ibut it is obvious that there may he error both ways — error 
in a too obstinate resistance to change, and error in a too 
ready acceptance of new ideas. Society must resist the 
new in thought under penalty of seeing the temple of justice 
become a bedlam. It must doubt the present and the 
future, and hold by the only thing of which it is sure — ^the 
past. It must hesitate to accept so-called progress, because 
who shall say which of the myriad new thoughts is to live 
as a permanent truth, and which is to perish in October ? 

Discrepancy between much of the thought of the nation 
and the state of its laws is, therefore, a necessary condition 
of the existence of organized political communities ; for 
opinion changes, and the law remains the same ; or, if it 
drifts with opinion, it ceases to have the true force of law. 
Positive principles, standards, ascertained points, on one 
hand, and the speculative spirit of progress on the other, 
must part company; and the speculative spirit can only 
adapt the law to its new views when it has changed society ; 
and law and thought, therefore, can only coincide at certain 
great stages, when revolution levels all and builds anew. 

Hence there is always an interval between the law as it 
is and the conceptions of many as to what the law should 
be ; and as the interval is wider, the danger is greater, for 
the space is bridged by morality and fiction and interpreta- 
tion ; and these take the place of law, and become accepted 
as law, and the people trust themselves upon the airy 



EEPUBLICAN GOYEEiS'MElS'T. 289 

structure, and at some critical moment discover that there 
is no firm falbric beneath them, and support the structure 
with patched up laws made in a spirit of panic ; or the 
changed condition becomes eventually considered as having 
behind it the sanction of a "common law." 

In this interval between what the law declares to be 
right and what is vaguely urged as right beyond the law — 
in this neutral strip on the moral frontier — revolutionary 
agitations that favor the usurpations either of open tyranny 
or of tyranny in the guise of reform or in the name of liberty, 
are equally at home. 

" On sort de la legalite pour rentrer dans le droit," said 
!N"apoleon III. ; and this sophism will sufficiently cover any 
departure from the law ; for, however one violates the law, 
he has only to allege that he believed his act to be right in 
order to place it v/ithin the limits of such a defence ; for as 
his individual judgment of what is right is thus assumed tO' 
be above the law, his individual declaration is the only- 
authority as to the nature of that judgment. In such a. 
condition there could be no known legal right, and law,, 
instead of a positive barrier or defence, instead of a sea- 
wall, would be a mere sand drift, formed by currents of 
personal opinion. 

Legalite^ if properly founded, is droit; if improperly 
founded, no individual is the judge or measure of the 
remedy ; and to make him such is to return to the condi- 
tion from which society escaped when the people first con- 
quered the right to have the law made known ; it is to 
re-establish that condition against which law is a refuge 
and a guarantee. 

This pretence of usurpation is identical with that by 

which men invoke the sanctions of a "higher law" than 

that of the community in which they live ; they propose to 
19 



290 MODEEN" STATES. 

do what God commands, not what man commands ; but as 
they are themselves the only sources of our knowledge of 
such divine instruction, it is never certain that God's com- 
mands, as thus derived, are not mingled in some degree 
with the human vanity and pride of the individual. This 
system hands over to the aggregated parsons or preachers 
of a country the function that is proper to its representa- 
tives in the legislature. Parliament houses are set aside for 
churches, and pulpits oust polls. 

XII. — In republics the law is the declared will of the 
sovereign number, and is practically contemplated as the 
sovereign. Fealty is not due personally from lower to 
higher subordinates, but all are equally subordinate to the 
law. Now, as the sovereign number is taken from one or 
another given level of the social quantity, the spirit of the 
law, and, consequently, the character of the republic will 
be sounder and purer, or coarser and more degraded. 

K the suffrage and other elements of political vitality 
are confined to the sections of the people — to a nobility, an 
aristocracy, a landed gentry, and a small portion of the 
people that cannot be thus classed, with the great body of 
the people excluded from the enjoyment of political rights, 
then the character of the law will be essentially opposed to 
the democratic spirit ; it will cherish privilege and defend 
caste, and justice will mean the defence of the privileged 
orders against the crimes of the excluded order. But if the 
classes privileged politically outnumber the others, this will 
stin be essentially a republican system. 

If, on the other hand, democracy has made such pro- 
gress that no member of the society is by law excluded 
from the exercise of political rights ; if every individual is 
in political contemplation equal to any other individual ; if 
the political quantity is made up of every atom without 



REPUBLICAIS' GOVEEIS'MEIIT. 291 

regard to intelligence or any otlier qnalification, then tlie 
republic will be inspired by extreme purposes in tlie demo- 
cratic sense ; for thougli the law opens the political arena 
to the instructed or restraining classes as well as to the 
many, yet the hopelessness of their endeavors excludes 
them as effectually as would a decree of exile. 

These are the extreme points, therefore, within the limit 
of republican forms. In one direction the republic is not 
to be distinguished in its spirit and character from the con- 
stitutional monarchy. It is only removed from tliat type 
by a single step. In the other direction it is ready to fall 
into anarchy and war, and to become subject to a military 
tyrant. Between these extremes many degrees of variation 
are possible ; and these depend, not in any case upon a 
change of forms, but always on changes with respect to the 
portion of the people that is politically efficient or dominant. 
As the coarser and ruder millions are kept out, the tone of 
political life is kept up, the standards are high, intelligence 
is rated at its just value, morality is maintained, for the 
classes recognize their responsibility ; but as the many gain 
ground and the cultured classes are overcome, all is 
loosened, the spirit of restraint is lost, and there is no 
efficient point of moral or political responsibility in any 
part of the fabric. 

In its essential the democratic aspiration is for popular 
sovereignty secured by any means, but generally by means 
of republican forms. If, however, republican forms stand 
in the way, or prove an obstruction or a limitation, the 
strife of politics is even against them for the main aspira- 
tion ; for while this essential spirit operates with vigor, no 
forais can suppress it, and any form is acceptable that does 
its will. But if this ideal is pursued to its ultimate limit, 
the nation will not continue republican whatever forms it 



292 MODEEIS" STATES. 

retains. It "becomes a despotism of Ibutcliery and confis- 
cation, like tlie French republic of 1793, or tlie Paris com- 
mune of 1871 ; and the sooner this is converted into the 
despotism of a single tyrant, who is at least personally 
responsible with his life, the better for the state and for 
humanity ; for no state has a right to indulge its frenzied 
conceptions of freedom at the cost of that common advance 
of the race, which we describe in the one word — civilization. 
And because the extreme indulgence of democratic aspira- 
tions and impulses has unchangeably and inevitably this 
result, it is and must be the duty of all men who would 
maintain the independence and freedom of their country to 
resist with all their might, as the devices of the enemy, the 
endeavor to push republican institutions to this extreme 
term — this political precipice. 

In the constant additions to the political quantity by 
the extension of the suffrage, there is an adulteration of the 
national life, and a corresponding descent of the whole in 
the political scale. As the multitude sweeps into the ex- 
istence of the state, as hordes of degraded and brutalized 
humanity from abroad — the unclean floods of immigration 
— are accepted and put upon a level with men who had con- 
quered and organized freedom ; as millions of slaves are 
given political equality, these are not raised up ; but supple 
tools for the ruin of political morality and the destruction 
of high standards are put into the hands of unscrupulous 
ambition. 

One notable evil consequent upon this, is the wide inter- 
val that is opened between the theory upon which the 
republican system stands, and the practice in republican 
states ; for the theory is that government is the creature of 
the people, but the people become the helpless creatures 
of a governing and office-holding oligarchy. 



EEPTJBLICAN GOVEET^MENT. 293 

In repulblics, more than elsewhere, are definitely sepa- 
rated the theory of government and the facts of government. 
An equal and just distribution of the sovereignty is pro- 
posed by the theory, and the theory of a republic is superior 
to the theory of any other form in so far as an aspiration to 
be just is assumed to be its essential spirit. But in propor- 
tion as the theory of a government is good, it is the more 
removed from the possibilities of practice, and the practice 
or the facts are, consequently, separated from the theory by 
a greater interval in this than in any other scheme. For 
the theory is so grand and fine that it is glorified in the 
imaginations of orators and poets ; it is set up on pedestals 
and worshipped, and all conception of its relation to the 
facts is lost. There is absolute divorce between the two, 
and the facts grovel in the dust for want of relation to a 
practicable theory. Theory sets up a fiction that the 
people are sovereign. But the persons who are in office, 
who administer the government, who apply authority, are 
sovereign in fact, or they depend only upon those from 
whom they receive their appointment. If the power upon 
whom they thus depend were the people, the circle would 
be complete; but that power is not the people. Conse- 
quently, as they are in power without a proper relation to 
the theoretically sovereign body, they are irresponsible 
sovereigns themselves ; and the theory which regards them 
as agents and has removed them from definite responsibility 
to any portion of the people and has substituted an indefinite 
responsibility to the whole people, has infinitely divided that 
responsibility, has made it so fine that it is not felt at any 
point ; and in practical concerns what is not felt does not 
exist. As the political mass becomes always coarser by 
extension of the political limits, and the theory by interpre- 
tation finer and finer, the interval grows, and the conse- 



294 MODEEIS- STATES. 

quence is that the administration falls ever into less worthy 
hands, and the proper surveillance ceases to exist. No 
class is responsible for either ; it is the whole people that 
is responsible ; and who shall teach the whole people its 
duty and not be hooted for impertinently pretending to a 
monopoly of wisdom ? 

Kings, who possessed a primary sovereignty, acted for 
themselves, knew their will, and did it. Eepnblican func- 
tionaries, possessing a derived sovereignty, pervert to their 
own purposes the will they are presumed to enforce. JN'a- 
tions can survive the separation of sovereignty from its 
source only if they produce the uncommon combination of 
political talent and an upright spirit. It needs the talent to 
comprehend this delicate machinery, for only such as com- 
prehend its principles can defend it from the assault of 
insidious foes who here always come in the guise of friends; 
and it needs incorruptible honesty both to refuse the price 
proffered by these foes and to resist the temptation to avail 
ourselves of the opportunities that always present them- 
selves for personal aggrandizement, opportunities the more 
seductive and dangerous because they can usually be acted 
upon without the knowledge of the people, and hence do 
not certainly involve cotemporary infamy. Without this 
combination of talent and honesty, the separation of the 
sovereign office from the source of sovereignty, which seems 
to become more and more imperatively necessary as nations 
advance in political consciousness, fails altogether of its 
presumed effect ; and the very measure contrived by nations 
to protect themselves from the oppressions of personal 
rulers, becomes through chicanery the means of surrender- 
ing them, bound hand and foot, not indeed to the same 
enemy, but to an enemy animated with the same purposes 
though not the same spirit ; without the unconscious eleva- 



EEPUBLICAlSr GOVEEI^MENT. 295 

tion of the early heroic king, but commonly possessing the 
morals of a cheat and the craven spirit of a demagogue. 
For if all the effort of the classes to pervert the choice have 
"been overcome, the man chosen always betrays the trust in 
favor of his party, or a faction of his party, or his family, 
or a dynasty, or tradition, or a political policy, or even in 
his own personal favor. It has not happened otherwise 
more than a dozen times in the history of humanity. 

Here, therefore, is the grand field of chicanery ; and the 
various contrivances of this system all start from the as- 
sumption that chicanery is what is most to be guarded 
against ; an assumption that has itself resulted from exten- 
sive experience of the fact. Through chicanery, therefore, 
the theory fails in three ways : 

1. Persons in authority forget that they are only agents. 

2. Persons chosen to act with these more directly for the 
people, betray their trust. 

3. In the choice of these persons the will of the people is 
perverted by intrigues of candidates, and by the falsifica- 
tion of elections. 

There is, therefore, delinquency at every step. Execu- 
tives pervert by interpretation the will they are presumed 
to act upon. Those who should restrain them betray their 
trust. Those who should nominate candidates act for them- 
selves and not for their parties. Parties substitute their 
own for the national advantage. Those who count tlie votes 
report the result falsely. At every step the betrayal is con- 
cealed by the peculiar relation of the persons to the facts. 
They are in the position of interpreters. If two persons 
who do not understand one another's speech must confer, a 
third must come between to translate for each one respec- 
tively what the other says ; but if this third one has a 
personal interest in the subject on which they confer, he 



296 MODEE]^ STATES, 

may translate critical phrases falsely, and give the con- 
ference the turn most satisfactory to himself. This is what 
is done by the agents of the people in politics. 

But all this, it must be noted, is not democracy. It is, 
on the contrary, the very negation and defeat of democracy ; 
but such defeat of the theory of democracy is, for the reasons 
we have given, the necessary consequence of the attempt to 
give this theory practical effect ; for if the many rule directly 
by themselves, there is no government, of course, but an- 
archy, and they fall into the hands of a tyrant ; if the many 
choose a few to govern in their name, they choose these 
because of resemblance to themselves and sympathy with 
their thoughts ; and of these few they eventually lose con- 
trol, and the few, in whatever name they may govern 
govern absolutely for themselves, and contemplate the 
state as their property. 

XIII.— There is a certain impassable limit in the growth 
of every people, and that limit is the point at which the 
conditions of greatness, or even existence, in a given age, 
are so radically different from what they were in a previous 
age, that strength in one condition becomes weakness in 
another; or, it is the point at which the modifications 
necessary to adapt the race or nation to the time, must be 
so great as to be impossible. At this point the nation falls 
out of the line and dies by the way side. 

In proportion as the social growth which modifies, and 
from which is to be taken the standard of right, is resisted 
and pent up by the rigidity of the political frame, which is 
the law ; in proportion as the conservative force holds by 
what exists and defeats the tendency to change, wiU be 
the violence of the revolution that shall finaUy beat down 
this resistance and re-establish the relation between the 
national character and the laws. 



EEPTJBLICAK G0VEE:N'ME]^T. 297 

In the violence of sncli revolutions, when the differences 
to l)e overcome are great or extreme, the nation commonly 
loses the greater part or the whole of the political progress 
previously made ; it may lose its civilization also, and it 
may be extirpated. In such an exigency the least result 
that can he hoped for is that it will lose only the progress 
made, and he temporarily restored to the primitive form of 
a military state under a despotic ruler. If it retains its 
civilization it will of course recover from such a condition 
more easily than it originally arose from it. 

France, in the crisis of its great revolution, exhibits this 
truth. Not only were the ancient laws unchanged and out 
of relation with the national sense of justice, but the reli- 
gious machinery sustained in the interest of an ecclesiastical 
class, and as a property, represented a mere superstition, 
rejected by the thought of all ; and the civil condition and 
social relations assumed such differences in human creatures 
that physiology itself came to be an element in politics 
against the old system. It had to be proved that a duke 
and a peasant had the same sort of stomach. It was neces- 
sary to sweei3 all away, and, instead of a nation, there 
remained only a wriggling mass of humanity, without or- 
ganization or defined relations. 

But in the case supposed, the extirpation of the nation 
depends upon other nations — its neighbors, not upon itself. 
If they are organized and capable, animated by hostile 
impulses, and unrestrained by any common sentiment of 
humanity, it is at their mercy. 

Eventually the measure of the power of the nation against 
the power of its neighbors is by war, which is therefore an 
ultimate test of the fitness of the nation for the conditions in 
which it must exist ; but where a nation has no neighbors, 
or none within reach, or none that can be reasonably con- 



298 MODEEK STATES. 

templated as dangers that compel it to avoid great errors, 
it must go to tlie limit of its destiny in the indulgence of 
extreme tendencies, and the battle for more and more 
^'liberty," so-called, must be fought out with the repressive 
elements that may be produced in that coniaict. If the 
republican theory in its extreme form is put in the place of 
the conceptions and restraints on which states were pre- 
viously operated, it will exclude them. But it will fail 
to restrain, fail to act as an effective political principle ; 
and the other restraints displaced, society must be im- 
perilled, and must fall, like Icarus, a victim to its mistaken 
aspirations. 



CHAPTEE V. 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 



I.— Political systems and all tlie machinery of organized 
states liave for their primary purpose, as we have seen, that 
they shall protect the people of the community in their lives 
and possessions ; and give, so far as is consistent with such 
security, satisfaction to national aspirations, whether these 
are for glory, equality, justice, or toward yet other concep- 
tions of material or moral advantage. But while the main 
purpose is thus for the good of the whole, a necessary con- 
sequence of the endeavor to secure this is, that certain indi- 
viduals or families or divisions of the social aggregate are 
placed in an advantageous position as the agents by whom 
it is sought to accomplish the primary purpose. 

In the effort to secure an ultimate advantage for all, we 
secure an immediate advantage for a part ; and we thereby 
put this part in a position from which the proposed main 
purpose is seen in a different aspect from that in w^hicli it is 
perceived by the society at large. If we make a man prince 
and give him trains of subordinates all the way down to 
tax-gatherers, constables, and sprinklers of holy water, 
while we may contemplate all these agents as the means to 
an end, they, we may be sure, will contemplate as the end 
that which we regard as the means ; and will forget that 
they are only to stand in their positions of dignity, honor, 
or magnificence while this may conduce to the general wel- 
fare, but will strenuously endeavor to make their occupancy 



300 MODEEN STATES. 

advantageous to themselves, thougli at the cost of that very 
purpose to further which they were first advanced from the 
position of the common people to the various stations of 
official superiority. 

Out of such abuse of public station grows, in the course 
of ages, every defeat that is encountered by the endeavor 
to realize in government the purposes of political organiza- 
tion, as above stated. Privilege accorded to persons for 
the public good becomes the origin of privileged orders, 
and all the aristocracies grow out of intimate relation to 
authority. Nearly all the ''noble" families originated in 
some base act. One pandered to a monarch's passions, 
another betrayed a public trust in his favor, and so on. If 
we accept the desire of an officeholder to continue indefi- 
nitely in his office, and to make its emoluments and honors 
personal, as the natural intellectual condition of that sort 
of humanity — and an abundant experience seems to exact 
this — we have only to follow this from minor to greater 
officials to find it arising to the extreme of a great and 
dominant passion in men who are placed at the head of 
states, whether by the action of a popular choice, or by the 
accidents of political or other crises.* 

As a debt exists to a nation only in the heavy burden 
of interest that is paid through successive generations, and 
all the obligations of honor in which it arose are utterly 
unknown to the many ; and they welcome the rascality of 
repudiation only as a release from what appears to them a 

* In the quaint style of Hobbes it is written : " Whoever beafeth the person 
of the people, beareth also his own natural PERSOisr. And though he be care- 
ful in his politic person to procure the common interest ; yet he is more or no 
less careful to procure the private good of himself, his family, kindred and 
friends ; and, for the most part, if the public interest chance to cross the 
private, he prefers the private.'* 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 301 

periodical extortion ; so the ruler who wonld be tlie lord of 
a people, but is bound by certain ceremonies and fictions to 
the fact that he is only their servant, pays begrudgingly, 
year by year, this interest on his occupancy ; repudiates it 
when he may ; and the obligation ceases to exist if there is 
no force to assert and maintain it. 

In the machinery of a state an individual is supreme as 
the administrator of the law. He retains that supremacy, 
but for the law substitutes his own will. Sometimes he 
declares that his will is the law "as he understands it," 
He succeeds in this course since the whole nation cannot be 
rallied in support of the law which he has set aside, either 
because the conflict that precedes his appearance has so far 
disintegrated society that it cannot act as a unit, or because 
at least one-half of the nation is not only indifferent to the 
law he puts aside, but is opposed to it, and regards him as 
its organ in the suppression of the law. 

His actual position as the recognized head of the nation 
will facilitate his use of the army where there is an army to 
be used ; but it is an error to believe that the fact that there 
is no standing army is a guarantee against this develop- 
ment. It may render it more difficult that there is no army ; 
but as the strife in which the usurper arises always assumes 
the character of a party conflict, he adroitly uses the stronger 
of the two parties, and that party, under his guidance, 
equips an army ostensibly to further its own cause. With 
this force he eventually puts down aU resistance, whether 
in the other party or his own. 

He is in actual control of the force of the nation for the 
public purposes. He is to that force the visible head of 
the nation ; and the assiduously cultivated theory that 
armies must obey and have no opinions, prevents any mili- 
tary consideration of the problem whether he has forfeited 



302 MODEEN STATES. 

the right to support ; and if there are any reasons why the 
army should identify its own cause with his, it is apt to 
regard its adhesion to his interests no less as a patriotic than 
as a military duty. 

Historically the usurper is regarded as the oppressor of 
the whole people, because he eventually puts down all 
the parties ; but on his first appearance he is always wel- 
comed and sustained by one or another of these. He has 
conseqaently different relations with the people at different 
points in his career, and this fact is the source of many 
apparent contradictions. They who have classed this char- 
acter as the organ of elements inimical to the people, have 
observed only one stage of his history, and they who have 
classed him as the supporter and organ of the people, have 
seen only another stage. He cannot be presented absolutely 
in either light. Though he is at one time the friend and at 
another the enemy of the people, he is never either con- 
stantly; though his acts on one side may sometimes so 
dominate his acts on the other side, as to give him an 
apparent classification. His position is taken with regard 
to the needs of authority, and of his own advantage, for he 
depresses the element he apprehends, and so seems its 
enemy ; and he supports that with which he believes he 
can balance the other, and so seems its friend ; and it is 
obvious that the different elements of society will stand 
in various relations to one another as to dominancy in 
different conflicts. The despot is therefore at one time the 
organ of the oligarchs and puts down the people ; at an- 
other time he is the organ of the people and puts down the 
oligarchs ; but no distinction can be founded on this, for 
this variation may occur in the history of the same despot. 

Cromwell turned out an assembly which nominally 
represented the people ; and Bonaparte did the same ; and 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 303 

the popularity or odium of the act was measured "by the 
repute in which the bodies were held. One of them might 
have saved the state ; but only the scum of the population 
had any hope in the further progress of the French revolu- 
tion. One of these men therefore rescued society from the 
banded cut-throats of a great capital who assumed to act 
in the name of the people ; the other saved the popular 
cause, so-called, from a body prepared to betray it in the 
name of order ; but each assembly was a mere conspiracy, 
and existed only to maintain the fiction of its sovereignty. 

II.— But though an executive puts his own will in place 
of a principle, this cannot be done at any time in any state. 
On the contrary, well nigh constant preparations must go 
before such a change. It needs more than the dominant 
ambition of any man to put an individual in authority 
against the wiU of a whole people. Governments cannot be 
thus set aside until the elements that are vital and vigorous 
in the state are exhausted, or are made indifferent or inimi- 
cal to the machinery and organization of the state as it 
exists. All the apparatus of government must have become 
■ so perverted from the original purpose of its creation that the 
nation will not rise in defence of what has become, perhaps, 
a mere oppression or systematized robbery. This end is 
brought about through the abuses and corruptions that 
creep in where other interests than those of the people at 
large are permitted to assume the first place in the adminis- 
tration of public concerns ; or it happens that a nation falls 
prostrate in despair and lassitude through continued in- 
dulgence of a passion for war, or in protracted civil dissen- 
sion. 

Usurpations, consequent upon political errors, are an 
extreme application, and commonly in extreme cases of that 
natural law in virtue of which the king is the defender of 



304 MODEEOS- STATES. 

the people against privileged classes. In a disordered state, 
ruling spirits of one side or tlie other lord it over the rest, 
and the people, tossed from one to another, are the victims 
of their various ferocities ; and a stronger one arises as a 
real protector, or a nominal champion. He rises by partj, 
but puts the party down because he perceives that in the 
actual conditions the success of his cause cannot be attained 
by party methods. 

Recurrence to the first principle, to simple force, is made 
necessary in the government because the people have again 
reached the condition in which the characteristic feature 
is a too vivid conception on the part of each person of his 
own interest as opposed to the general interest ; or the per- 
ception of the general interest exists only as against a 
foreign foe, and not in regard to domestic concerns. All the 
original force which was the first condition of the existence 
or safety of society has been remitted, little by little ; but the 
remission has been based always on a series of compromises 
between the parts of society ; and so long as these compro- 
mises are valid and are observed, the force cannot recur. 
But generations follow which are ignorant of the compro- 
mises, ignorant of the trial that has been made and of the 
result secured ; or if acquainted with them they repudiate 
the result. Or in the growth of corruption the common 
consequence is that one part of society is defrauded of the 
benefit of its relation to the compromises of the national 
history. On one side or the other, therefore, a du-ect appeal 
is made that goes behind the compromises, and revives the 
force either to put down the corruptions, or to try over 
again the ancient conflicts of which those compromises were 
the settlement. Laws that were the expressions of the com- 
promises have ceased to bind because they are not respected 
— they are cheated or openly violated, and judges, the 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 305 

results of party victory, will not enforce laws inimical to 
tlie purposes of their party. In the United States Supreme 
Court it was decided on a certain occasion that paper could 
not be made equivalent to gold by statute ; but party 
action added to that tribunal judges enough to change the 
judgment, and the court then held that paper could be 
made equivalent to gold by statute. This is only a flagrant 
instance of what occurs constantly where a party power 
becomes indifferent to the conditions or compromises on 
which a political fabric rests, and opens the way for a return 
to the rule of force. 

But it is the tendency of political progress to cultivate 
the higher moral tone that preserves respect for the com- 
promises, and prevents parties from taking unjust advan- 
tage of victory, enables their leaders to see the ultimate 
ruin of all parties in the oppression of one beyond the line 
of the compromise. It is further the tendency of enlighten- 
ment to produce amendments of the compromise rather- 
than permit their partial and inefficient action to ruin alL. 
In these ways it is that the spirit of the age puts the per- 
sonal usurpations constantly further away. 

Perhaps the abuse that most certainly and decisively 

alienates the loyalty of the people is the failure of justice... 

So innumerable are the phases of human activity, and 

the variations that different circumstances give to the same 

act, that the declaration of a few general principles which 

it is necessary to lay down as the law, can never provide 

for each case distinguished by unforeseen particulars so 

completely but that human ingenuity can plausibly show, 

either that the case does not come under the law, though it 

appear on the surface the very case the law was made to 

meet, or that it does come under the law, though it seem 

to the ordinary eye not to be touched by it. And in virtue 
20 



306 MODERN STATES. 

of this fact it is not the law that rules in states, l3nt such an 
interpretation of the law as it may please those persons or 
classes to apply into whose hands the administration of the 
law is placed. Legislation has been set aside in the State 
of New York upon theories introduced into English juris- 
prudence in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Our modern 
system of the dispensation of justice by courts with lawyers, 
interpretation and fiction, the very multiplication of laws 
which makes interpretation necessary, and the duality of 
the law, all these facilitate the substitution of the will of 
politicians, parties, persons, political or financial magnates 
for the law ; and justice becomes a conventional term. 

Interpretation, and fiction which is one of the devices of 
interpretation, are the processes by which mainly the law 
is perverted from the simplicity of its application, and by 
which the way is opened to that wilderness of jurisprudence 
in which all the direct certainty of the law is lost. Inter- 
pretation has been used everywhere and in all ages; in 
some countries in responses of the wise on abstract statements 
presumed to cover cases, in others in judgments definitely 
given on cases. In its first operation it is advantageous. 
It prevents the failure of justice. It keeps the law in rela- 
tion with the growth of thought, and those wide departures 
of these two points that would render the law inoperative 
and obsolete are thereby made impossible. It bridges the 
chasm that opens between a fixed state of law and progres- 
sive thought. But in the very fact of this useful service it 
begins a process to which there is no limitation, and which 
ultimately substitutes for the law a whole system of meta- 
physical niceties, hair-drawn distinctions, quibbles and 
fancies of a sort of legal philosophy. In the presence of a 
vigorous spirit of interpretation it is of no consequence what 
the law declares— for interpretation can, by its accepted 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 807 

process, establish the relation that pleases it between any 
facts and any presumed requirement of the law. In the 
presence of such a fact only the simple-minded people heed 
the plain law. Rich corporations and the great generally 
do not conform their actions to the law ; they do what they 
will, and pay acute adepts in legal dialectics to find them 
some phrases in the law that will justify their action. 

Fiction is a pretence that something is the law which is 
not the law ; that the law was made in some conditions that 
did not exist when it was made ; that it was made in view 
of possibilities not then conceivable. It is therefore made 
up of flagrant falsehood, mostly employed to the prejudice 
and oppression of the people, though often to the ruin of 
the rulers. Charles I. in England was a victim of the 
fictions invented by the lawyers as to the nature of parlia- 
ment, and more directly of a fiction invented to extort the 
money of the people as if it were legally due. 

Parliament was the assembly of the nation ; but for con- 
venience and facility it was summoned by writs issued in the 
king's name ; and in this the king was in fact the servant of 
the parliament — charged with just such a duty as a man 
puts upon his domestic when he says, '' "Wake me at such 
an hour." But the lawyers, who could not com^^rehend 
apparently that a servant may be charged to call his lord, 
but thought that the lord always called the servant, foisted 
upon the mere fact that the Idng called the parliament, the 
fiction that parliament was a creature of the royal will ; and 
Charles, instructed in this theory of the lawyers, assumed 
a demeanor in harmony with it, and so stumbled uj) the 
steps of the scaffold on which the headsman waits for 
foolish kings. But the fictions upon which the ship-money 
decision was based, and which led immediately to resistance, 
were equally flagrant insults to popular intelligence. It was 



308 MODEEN STATES. 

laid down that the king had an original right to demand 
ships of the people in circnm stances where ships are needed 
—which may be true ; but, further, that if he wanted money 
more than ships, he had a right to commute with the people 
for the money value of such ships, and collect that value as 
taxes. But the common sense of the nation saw that if the 
case for the want of ships was so little urgent that commu- 
tation was admissible, then there was not such a need of 
ships as might justify the assertion of a natural right to 
demand them ; that if a right is based on a need, and there 
is no need, there is no right. 

Three main points are given in Quintilian as to which 
the lawyers may dispute in every case to which it is sought 
to apply a law : 1. Whether the act was done ; 2. Whether 
it was wrongfully done ; 3. Whetlier the action to punish it 
is brought according to law. On the first point so many 
witnesses may be brought as to utterly confuse knowledge, 
and the testimony may be true or false ; on the second 
point volumes may be written to show that an act that 
is the subject of a trial is not the act that the law it is 
sought to apply to it intended to forbid, or, if this is likely 
to fail, that some other law of a more sacred character, 
proper] y interpreted, overrules this law by permitting such 
act; and, on the third point, infinite difficulties may be 
raised of jurisdiction and of defects in the process. All 
that the eighteen Christian centuries have done is to add 
millions of sophistical arguments and obstructive subdivi- 
sions of these original difficulties in every instance of the 
application of the law ; and these form about every case an 
intellectual cloud in which judges may, almost without 
shame, determine, not as the law dictates, but as their 
prejudices or venality, or the spirit and interests of their 
class, require. 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 309 

Some class always, as we have seen, endeavors to impose 
its will as the will of the whole, and its efforts to this end 
are mostly exerted in the attempt to frame the law as it 
would have it ; but if it fails in this, it does not relinquish 
its efforts, hut only begins thereupon the further attempt to 
secure to itself the administration of the law ; and if it suc- 
ceeds in this later attempt it will matter little for its failure 
in tlie first, for it applies the law now as it would have 
framed it if successful then. 

These are the methods by which the vitality of a system 
is fretted away where it is necessary to deceive popular 
intelligence; but where authority has neither fear nor 
shame, it proceeds differently, as when in England thous- 
ands were condemned to death merely that pardons might 

be sold to them. 

Almost as much harm is done by the erroneous concep- 
tions that are involved in the attempt to correct these evils 
as is done by the evils themselves ; for these conceptions 
find no better way for correcting the application of authority 
than that of relieving the pressure altogether. Authority is 
first impowered that it may protect the people from the 
rogues ; but it is perverted, the people become the victims, 
and the rogues are always in the right. In the name of the 
people all that part of authority is then reduced to a nullity ; 
society destroys the instrument that has been badly used, 
instead of endeavoring to correct the use. Every evil in the 
state becomes a pretext for new advances of the democratic 
energy and new reductions of authority, and this is not a 

remedy. 

Pursuit of the tendency toward the reduction of authority 
is just and safe and erroneous and dangerous. It is just in 
so far as it operates against those restraints which have 
grown up as abuses, through ambition and chicanery, and 



^1^ MODEEIT STATES. 

which, therefore, are not necessary parts of any plan for 
securing the legitimate objects in view of which authority is 
organized. It is further just and proper in so far as it 
strives to secure those legitimate emancipations of society 
which the moral and intellectual growth of the nation have 
made possible and salutary. But mistakes are made ; and 
as politics is a subject in which the people at large are com- 
monly ignorant, and as the people are played upon through 
passions that dim the intellectual vision, and through 
their generous impulses, and are moved mainly through 
their susceptibility to delusions, this sphere of their activity 
is above all spheres, fruitful in great and dangerous errors. 
They are excited by agitation against what is called some 
great abuse, and they destroy a vital part of the poHtical 
frame ; not because it fretted them, but often because it 
stood in the way of some favored party or the ambition of 
some popular leader. They are impelled to some extreme 
change in the state under the influence of a moral agitation 
based upon a theory of human nature that flatters their 
vanity, but which for practical application is grossly at 
fault. And in these circumstances the pursuit of the liberal 
tendency becomes erroneous, and involves misapplication 
of the force which, rightly directed, strengthens states,' 
and wrongly directed, thrusts them onward to their ruin. 
Every nation is wrong at its peril in a political crisis ; for 
every error leads more or less directly toward the loss of 
liberty. 

As soon as liberty has gone so far as to exceed the limit 
of a just operation of principles recognized by the age, it is 
outside the lines, and provokes a struggle outside them. 
In the fight that follows it is put down, because in such a 
case ' 'liberty" is seen to be the mere right of a dominant 
element to oppress all others. Those resolute spirits that 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 311 

defend the liberties of a nation, will not figM for such a 

delusion. 

As the administration of justice is the great primary 
function of internal life, for the right performance of which 
states are organized, its failure is the one fact that most 
alienates the loyalty of a people ; but other corruptions 
keep pace with it, and there is no part of the life of states 
that does not in this direction lead to the common conse- 
quence. Taxation, public defence, and the determination 
of the validity of authority, are other functions that gener- 
ally become the spheres of this disease of the body politic- 
Every man is justly held subject to contribute a portion of 
his means for the support of the state, and his service if need 
be. Thus authority acquires the right to take a man's 
money in the name of taxes, and abuses of this right lead 
to the wholesale plundering of the nation that money may 
be raised for purposes in which the people have no concern ; 
while the right to use the man himself as a soldier, a right 
definitely limited by the nation's need, leads to an indis- 
criminate slaughter of the youth of the nation to support 
dynastic claims and personal ambitions. 

If these evils are greater in republics than elsewhere it is 
because the most certain consequence of universal suffrage as 
practiced is the degradation of authority, since, as a larger 
number of persons vote there is a larger proportion of per- 
sons incapable of exercising a proper discretion who yet 
assist in the choice of public officers, and these incapable 
persons simply act at the instigation of the demagogues. 
There is therefore the less likelihood that men will be 
chosen to fill important posts because of their talent or 
virtue, the more likelihood that a low morality will prevail 
in public life ; and as an honest administration is an indis- 
pensable essential in republics, this result of universal 



^^^ MODEEIT STATES. 

suffrage is directly inimical to freedom. It is the critical 
extension of freedom which imperils all the rest. 

Popular sovereignty distinctly degrades the standard of 
public service, and thus invites the invasions of chicanery. 
Nobody will try to cheat in arithmetic such handlers of money 
as win be found behind the counters of the Eothschilds ; but 
if a banker, enamored of equality, makes his menial ser- 
vant a financial secretary because that person is as "good" 
as anybody else, cheating will be the rule of service. 

III.— There are three phases of national vitality in which, 
by the constant operation of identical principles, the govern- 
ment recurs to the personal form, or rather in which the 
personal form revives spontaneously because of the return 
of society to those conditions in which that form first arose. 
In each of these cases a ruler, who in theory acts as the 
functionary of the people, simply puts his foot on that 
fiction, repudiates the constitutional limitations which were 
the assumed guarantee of the sovereign office, and society 
finds itself unable to enforce against him the principle of 
those limitations. 

War with a foreign state ; occasions of great party con- 
flict for and against the modification of the political system, 
with or without the civil war to which such a conflict may 
lead ; and occasions of great social agitation, in which the 
ordinary struggle of the parts separated by strictly social 
facts becomes so furious as to displace all motives but those 
of the primary passions of humanity, the savage contempt 
of the upper for the lower, and the deep hatred of those on 
the nether side of the great inequalities-these are the three 
phases of a nation's Hfe in one of which the tyrant always 
comes if he comes at all. 

But in no case is there what might be called a thoroughly 
pure example. That is to say, the case induced in any one 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 313 

phase is complicated by activities related to one or to both 
of the other phases. War, for instance, even with foreign 
powers, constantly grows out of the political or the social 
conflicts of any people ; for as they are weakened hy these, 
neighbors thus made relatively stronger, reopen the settle- 
ment of some ancient quarrel, and a conflict the first cause 
of which was a failure of the crops, or a disputed authority 
at some delicate part of the political machinery, may thus 
eventually induce the military despotism of a mere soldier 
without any relation to the primary strife. So every party 
conflict, strictly political at first, becomes sooner or later a 
social conflict in some degree, for the discontents of classes 
are utilized as potent motives by party leaders ; and every 
social conflict becomes political, because it is too commonly 
believed that the price of bread depends exclusively upon 
legislation. Cases must be distinguished therefore by the 
element which dominates all others and supplies the supreme 
motive rather than by the absence of other motives. 

Between the ancient and the modern appearance of the 
last personal ruler there is this important distinction : In 
the ancient world he appeared either in the anarchies of 
conflict that marked the endeavor to establish democracies, 
or in the anarchy that resulted from the corruption of 
society where democracies had prevailed for generations, 
and where, consequently, they must be regarded as estab- 
lished. He was therefore an incident and a result. But 
in the modern world he is strictly an incident. No re- 
public that could fairly be called established has yet 
perished in modern times. Modern history is therefore 
without other than logical evidence as to how this form 
will perish ; but there are famous records of the formation 
of despotic authority in the course of the attempt to 
organize republics. In the three most conspicuous instances 



314 MODERIT STATES, 

in this age of tlie establishment of military despotisms 
there is a common resemblance as to this fact, that not one 
of them followed an organized republican system, but per- 
verted the attempt to obtain it, arose in the disorders of a 
transition period, and resulted by device and betrayal from 
the conflicts and collisions of the forces that struggled for 
and against the republic. In a chaotic condition of society, 
where those who favor popular government and those who 
would maintain or re-establish systems of privilege are not 
far from equal in number, the small weight that is to deter- 
mine the balance to one side or the other, may be so dis- 
posed in the interest of a person, a dynasty, or an intrigue, 
as to delude both sides, and deliver them up bound ; unless 
it happen, as it rarely does in stormy times, that the leaders 
of the great opposing parties are at once clear-sighted and 
patriotic ; clear-sighted to discern the real purposes of the 
enemy who assumes specious names, and patriotic to desire 
even the success of the other party with its legitimate ob- 
jects rather than a triumph over it gained at the cost of 
freedom. In the incapacity of men in high station to per- 
ceive facts in their germs, and in the extravagance of party 
spirit which prefers a cataclysm to the success of the oppo- 
sition, Cromwell, J^apoleon Bonaparte, and Louis Bona- 
parte found the possibility of their several enterprises ; and 
those characters will appear the more certainly in the history 
of republics as their stage is later, because democracy lifts 
into authority men less possessed of the perceptions referred 
to, and more prone to relinquish reason and judgment for 
the violence of party spirit. 

It may not be said, therefore, that the republic wiU not 
induce this consequence. We have seen that the republican 
system tends to produce disorders and derangements similar 
to those which are found at the sta2;e of transition from 



MILITAET DESPOTISM. 315 

other forms to tliat of tlie repuMc ; Ibecause in the extreme 
disintegration of authority, where there is no sovereignty 
but that of a sovereign principle, and where the identity of 
this principle is determined only "by the voice of the majority, 
the state becomes the victim of fraudulent practices ; and 
the one fact always certain is cliicanery, and the other 
essential fact, the material on which chicanery is to operate, 
is a republican product. 

As the system therefore produces like conditions, it may 
be supposed it will produce like results ; but, as a matter 
of fact, personal sovereignty in modern states has not yet 
followed the republic, but has been the consequence of 
struggles maintained by the oligarchic against the demo- 
cratic elements ; and wherever the enmities and passions of 
this conflict become fierce, there this result is imminent. 
But a leaven of the oligarchic spirit, though it may be in a 
mere plutocracy, remains and exists in the most extreme 
type of democratic dominancy. 

One fact may, however, be safely declared as to the 
occurrence of despotic forms in the close of republican his- 
tory, which is that they must come at constantly later 
stages. As the intelligence and political consciousness of 
nations is increased, and civilization progresses, the distri- 
bution of the sovereignty may constantly advance to further 
and further points without the loss in the equilibrium which 
involves ruin. It is therefore an important difference in 
favor of modern history, and due to the variations of modern 
life, that the inevitable despot must come at points more 
and more remote from the origin of states. 

ly. — One of the proceedings that is always possible, and 
even easy, is to put down that to which all are indifferent ; 
and it is because of this fact that with some nations a war 
leader finds his way to supreme power smoothed by the 



316 MODERIT STATES. 

passions and pride of tlie people. For in war a nation 
"becomes careless of all facts save its relation with tlie 
enemy in precise proportion to tlie degree in wMcli its pride 
and vanity overwhelm all other intellectnal or moral attri- 
"butes. It cannot endure to be overcome. Certain of the 
"barharians who were met by the Cyrians in their famous 
retreat from the field of Cunaxa, finding they could not 
withstand these trained warriors, threw themselves with 
their wives and children from the high cliffs, and perished 
in the fall, apparently that they might die free. But this 
was comprehensible in a period when defeat involved 
actual slavery. Yet a similar impulse seems to move cer- 
tain races in an age when the result of defeat is an intellec- 
tual more than a physical torture. They are blinded like 
horses by the fury of their pace, and, indifferent to all but 
victory, they accept gladly the most extreme subjection to 
one of their own number, that he may save their pride from 
subjection to the foe. Freedom is pledged that pride may 
be redeemed, and that all the extravagance of the passion 
for victory and glory may be gratified. Power is given to 
the commander without stint, that he may overcome the 
enemy, and in absolute indifference to the fact that other 
uses may be made of it ; for the law then is that he who 
ministers to the dominant passion may do what he will as to 
all else. With such a nation, indeed, the love of liberty is 
rather an intellectual vanity than an ineradicable element of 
the nature. It is what the taste for finery and good manners 
was with the cat that became a countess, but in whom the 
sight of vermin awakened her irresistible native impulses. 

In the history of JS'apoleon Bonaparte is seen the case 
where the passion for victory makes a whole nation the 
slave of the one man whose name alone seems to assure 
the success of armies. At the first appearance of Bona- 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 317 

parte he is an o"bscure sulbaltern. His highest flight of 
ambition is that he may become in the wars then on foot a 
colonel of artillery ; that he may secure, before peace shall 
snatch away the occasion, a grade that will secnre him 
some consideration and an easy subsistence for the future. 
But an intrigue involves his opportunity. He secures a 
command, and finds himself in the sphere for which some 
happy accident of cerebral development had pre-eminently 
fitted him. He finds, as all do with experience, that armies 
are commonly commanded by men of small intellectual 
calibre, and that if a man of genius comes upon the scene, 
he is irresistible. From small strokes of good fortune he 
went on to great successes, the results of the coincidence of 
fortunate occasion, courage, and talent. He made thus a 
great impression on the mind of the nation. In Italy he 
was in communication with the revolutionary leaders in 
Paris, and inspired the revolution of Fructidor 13, by which 
the chamber was "purged" of royalist elements. Was 
this because, with a perception of the economy of political 
as well as military forces, he saw that it was only the 
triumph of the ultimate revolutionary elements which could 
open a way for him, or was it that he sympathized with the 
revolution ? It was early in his career for the former idea 
to have risen, and he never had any clear conception of 
politics. Yet an ultimate purpose seems to have revolved in 
Ms mind at that period, though, perhaps, only as an unde- 
fined possibility. 

But the occasion that then seemed open passed away, 
and Bonaparte went to Egypt. Calamity fell upon the 
French arms in all parts of Europe, and the invasion of tlie 
country was imminent. What was to become of France ? 
She could not make peace ; she could not face degradation. 
Who would save her, and take a crown for his pains ? All 



318 modee:^" states. 

eyes were turned to Egypt, and the soldier believed to Ibe 
there, suddenly landed in France. Sieyes and Talleyrand 
did the rest. Events followed one another in an inevitable 
series, and their relations assumed all its significance from 
the character of the time and the people. 

If the facts in the history of a state constitute the army 
the great and only centre of the national vitality, the head 
of the anny will become the head of the state ; and if the 
state is then in a disorganized or chaotic condition as to its 
form, and as to the relation of the parts to one another, the 
man thus lifted into dominancy may reconstruct it on any 
scheme that is in general accordance with the modes of 
popular thought. 

Y.— Between the years 1640 and 1660 there were in Eng- 
land twenty years of strife due to a conflict for supremacy 
between the ancient conceptions of government and the 
needs of a growing nation. In this conflict Charles I. was 
the tool of those who held by the old system. Charles was 
not so much of a tyrant as the victim of some common 
errors, and a simple tool of the nobles and prelates, who 
thought through him to redress the balance of the powers 
of the state in their favor. Charles's theories were the 
theories of Eome in so far as the influence of Rome was felt 
at the court ; they were the theories which the Church of 
England, in its endeavor to keep the nation in Episcopal 
tutelage, had inherited from Rome; and they were the 
theories of the lawyers whose declarations as to the kingly 
attributes and the prerogative were taken without consider- 
ation that they were part of the legal fiction which contem- 
plated the king as the supreme judge, though it would not 
permit him to sit on the bench even as a police magistrate. 

Charles held 'Hhat no man, nor body of men, had power 
to call him to an account, being not entrusted by man, and 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 319 

therefore acconntaMe only to God for his actions." And 
as to the theory that kings are only intrusted with power 
by the people for the public advantage, he said: ''lam 
not entrusted by the people ; they are mine by inheritance." 

This was the extreme notion of divine right ; yet at this 
time parliament was the sovereign power in the nation. 
Charles held authority nominally as a king, in fact as a 
functionary ; for he could only obtain money by act of 
parliament, he could not maintain an armed force without 
money, and it was only by the use of armed force that he 
could assert a will contrary to that of the nation as ex- 
pressed in parliament. He did not perceive these plain 
facts, for he had taken up in the atmosphere of the court 
and, perhaps, from the fancies of his altogether contemptible 
father, some current theories of the absolute authority of 
the king, as the representative of God on earth ; theories 
that did no harm, as entertained by James, neither to him 
nor to the country, as it does no harm to society generally 
for a few mild imbeciles, even in conspicuous places, to 
fancy they have discovered the philosopher's stone or a 
scheme of perpetual motion. But Charles was pushed to 
the attempt to act on these theories ; and against the attempt 
to act upon theories of royal authority which the nation had 
outgrown by some generations, the people rose, and there 
followed three typical conflicts, making the whole cycle of 
the civil war. 

In the first conflict — that between the supporters and 
opponents of the old ideas — the opponents were victorious, 
and the nation was supreme as against the classes and 
privileged persons. But these opponents were presby- 
terians and independents ; and in the second conflict between 
these the independents triumphed. This led up to the third 
conflict, between Cromwell with his army and all others 



320 MODEEIS" STATES. 

without it. In the first victory the nation is snpreme ; in 
the second, one division of the nation is snpreme over 
another, and at the end of the third conflict the man in 
authority has ceased to distinguish between any elements 
of opposition to his will as to what may inspire them. His 
will stands, not in place of the law, since the law is in 
abeyance, but in place of "the cause," which was supposed 
to inspire all of the right side. 

Because parliament called the "nineteen propositions" 
of June 2, 1643, its " humble petition and advice," the king 
thought himself at liberty to treat that paper with contempt. 
He did not see that it involved the conditions of tranquillity ; 
that upon these terms he could continue his sovereignty ; 
and that without them he must only hold if he could con- 
quer. The king's words, repeated from Strafford, are a 
sufiicient statement of the power of parliament. Parlia- 
ment, it was recognized on all hands, had the sole power to 
grant money ; and if it refused to grant it — what then ? 
Then " His Majesty was loosed and absolved from all rules 
of government, and was to do everything that power would 
admit." So said Charles's greatest adviser and Charles 
himself. Now, any fact that "loosed" the obligations of 
government, that "absolved the king from all rules," in- 
duced a state of war, and therefore made parliament equally 
free; and if the king was "to do everything that power 
would admit" — if the appeal was simply to force— that 
appeal was as good for one side as for the other. Then 
immediately arose those relations between ruler and people 
in virtue of which that side was supreme which was the 
stronger. 

There was but one practical limitation to the sovereignty 
of parliament, even within the laws ; this was the sole 
remnant of the ancient kingly supremacy — the royal power 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 321 

to dissolve the House. Charles put himself completely in 
the hands of parliament when he abdicated that power by 
signing the bill 16 Car. I., cap. 7. 

In virtue of that bill the parliament of 1640 became a 
national convention in the larger sense ; it became a body 
not merely charged with the duties of legislation within 
certain recognized constitutional limits, but a body charged 
with the ampler function of moving the limits, of reviewing 
and reconstructing the whole political fabric. That law 
abdicated the prerogative, and gave the nation absolutely 
into the hands of the representatives. 

It seems probable that the king signed this act in the 
spirit in which, at about the same time, he signed many 
others little favorable to his policy— that is, under the in- 
spiration of those advisers who had already persuaded him 
to seize the kingdom by armed force, and declare null all 
acts inimical to their views. As they contemplated san- 
guinely the immediate realization of this project, they did 
not care what acts were signed meantime. They could as^. 
readily nullify many as two or three. One does does not 
care what money he loses with a gambler if he has made up- 
his mind to cut the winner's throat and pick his pocketa 
when the game is over. 

With the parliament thus made supreme, and disposed 
to assert its supremacy to the utmost— with such a diver- 
gence in views as we have seen above— the appeal to force 
was necessarily made and resulted in favor of the parlia- 
ment ; and this, the first stage of the great rebellion, was 
ended in 1645 by the defeat of the king at Xaseby, and the 
immediate dispersion thereupon of all the armed forces that 
had sustained his quarrel. 

As the constitution of England stood before the act 
above cited, there was no restraint upon the arbitrary power 



822 MODEEIT STATES. 

of the king save in the parliament ; and Charles and his 
predecessors had shown that even this restraint was more 
nominal than real, for they could put the parliament aside 
loj their decree, and did punish, upon the dissolution, 
memhers who had made themselves ohnoxious during the 
session. Hence an always possible despotism was set aside 
"by the act abrogating the king' s prerogative for the dissolu- 
tion of parliament. This took away from the king, at a 
stroke, the power that the kings had acquked by open 
force or stealthy encroachments, in many generations. The 
declaration that the parliament should be indissoluble with- 
out its own consent, gave it the power to act without such 
consideration of him as was before necessary. 

From the moment that the triumph of the parliamentary 
cause stood on the basis of victory in the field, the public 
topic regarding which the majority of the nation was of 
fone mind gave place to a topic regarding which it was 
(divided. All were agreed as to the necessity of asserting to 
the utmost the supremacy of the national will against the 

4 

p)retensions of Charles Stuart ; but with Stuart put down, 
dissension arose between the victors as to the point to 
which this assertion properly went. One faction, royalist 
in political faith, but led to revolt by the abuses of the 
royal authority, held that the assertion was against the ill- 
advised pretensions only ; another, with faith in hierarchy, 
but some indifference to persons, conceived the assertion to 
be against this individual ruler, Charles I. ; and a third, with 
more republican enthusiasm and faith in humanity than ac- 
curate political perception, esteemed that the only safety was 
in utilizing the assertion as against royalty and the throne. 
One was against the throne ; another against its occupant 
only ; and a third only against the unconstitutional extrava- 
gances of that occupant's politics; but the factions were 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 323 

varying quantities, and in tlie intrigue that filled the four 
years between the dispersion of the royal forces and the 
decapitation of Charles they changed their ground as the 
exigencies of party strife made necessary ; but, notwith- 
standing these variations, there never was a time when the 
abandonment of the ridiculous pretences that led to the 
revolt would not have given Charles a very large party to 
support his re-establishment in all his original legitimate 
authority. He could any day almost have recovered the 
throne with the prerogative made subject to additional sub- 
stantial limitations and guarantees ; but in whatever cir- 
cumstances he might have been restored, the event would 
always have left a deeply dissatisfied group of sincere 
republicans. 

At the moment when hostilities came to an end the 
presbyterians were the dominant party in parliament ; and 
as such they entered into negotiation with the monarch even 
before he became captive, and would have made terms with 
him wliile he was their prisoner, pushed on as they were by 
the royalists and much popular sentiment ; but that they 
dared not trust him for the fulfilment, when once restored, 
of any conditions made under duress. In the army, how- 
ever, the prevalent opinions were those of the independents, 
who regarded the presbyterians as not greatly preferable to 
papists, and who contemplated the proposed settlement 
with the king as a betrayal of the nation's cause, though 
they themselves proved subsequently not unwilling to make 
with the monarch terms satisfactory to themselves. It was 
in consequence of the apprehension in the army as to the 
intentions of the presbyterians that the king was seized and 
taken from the custody of the parliamentary commissioners 
by Cornet Joyce, June 4th, 1647. By this step the army 
entered upon an open difference with the parliament, and 



324 MODEKK STATES. 

from tliis point there was almost a scramlble to make terms 
with the king, the parliament and the army disputing who 
should concede the most, and so, by cheap promises, gain 
possession of the government it was intended to set up 
around the royal puppet. Charles saw all this, and was 
resolved to take advantage of the great turn of the tide in 
his favor, and get the best terms that were possible from 
any party ; but he did not comprehend the character of the 
men into whose hands he had fallen. His disposition as to 
terms was well known to them, and Ireton said to him : 
'' Sire, you have an intention to be arbitrator between the 
parliament and us, and we mean to be so between you and 
the parliament." Even thus warned, he understood so little 
that he was trifling at the edge of a precipice, that the man 
who negotiated on his behalf with the military leaders 
needed to be told by this same soldier, Ireton, ''that there 
must be a distinction made between the conquerors and 
those that had been beaten, and that he himself should be 
afraid of a parliament where the king' s party had the major 
vote." Yet even the man who acted for the monarch, and 
whose eyes needed to be thus rudely opened by the down- 
right Ireton, himself judged acceptable terms that the king 
refused to ratify when they were reported to him, and argued 
that the army demanded so little "that he should suspect 
they designed to abuse him if they had demanded less ; 
there being no appearance that men who had through so 
many dangers and diflGlculties acquired such advantages, 
would content themselves with less than was contained in 
these proposals ;" and he gave it as his judgment that "a 
crown so near lost was never recovered so easily as this 
would be" if things were adjusted on the terms proposed 
by the army. 

But the king was so persuaded that ''they could not 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 325 

subsist without him," that he let this chance go loj. En- 
couraged to refuse the terms of the army by the men in the 
parliament who were apprehensive of the power that would 
fall into the hands of the military men if the king should 
settle with them, he finally bade defiance to the men who 
held his fate in their hands ; and these, finding he would 
make no terms that would ensure their safety, and appre- 
hending that the parliament would yet outstrip them in the 
negotiation, resolved upon the last desperate step as the 
only one left in the circumstances. They were immediately 
determined to this by a vote in parliament to the effect that 
'* the king's concessions were ground for a future settlement." 
That was a dangerous hint of what might follow if parlia- 
ment were let alone. Thereupon the army applied the 
famous ''Pride's purge;" that is, they stationed Col. Pride 
with a body of soldiers at the door, and excluded from the 
deliberations of the House all persons inimical to the Com- 
monwealth party. With the composition of the parliament 
thus changed, it was in sympathy with the army, and the 
necessary steps for the condemnation of the king as a traitor 
were taken without delav, and he was condemned and exe- 
cuted in January, 1649. 

Thus the king's fate was determined only when the inde- 
pendents were satisfied that he would accept no reasonable 
plan for the reorganization of the state. His life then repre- 
sented to them no hope, but only the danger that the pres- 
byterians should with him make some arrangement that 
would have a show of legality and impose on the country ; 
they knew he was treating with the Scotch. He was the vic- 
tim of party strife and of his own unconquerable meanness 
and duplicity. An indissoluble parliament under the infiu- 
ence of a monarchical majority were taking steps that could 
only lead to replacing Charles on the throne, and restora- 



326 MODEEJ?" STATES. 

tion of all things, when the military party acted with reso- 
lute energy to save the cause as well as their own heads. 

Immediately after the execution of the king, parliament 
declared that the House of Peers was useless and danger- 
ous, and ought to be abolished ; that the oflSce of a king in 
this nation is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to 
the liberty, safety and public interest of the people, and 
therefore ought to be abolished ; and that they will settle 
the government of the nation in the way of a common- 
wealth." Shortly before it had been declared ''that the 
people are, under God, the original of all just power ; that 
the House of Commons being chosen by and representing 
the people, are the supreme power in the nation ; that what- 
soever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in 
parliament hath the force of a law, and the people are con- 
cluded thereby though the consent of king or peer be not 
had thereto." 

An Executive Council of State of forty persons was 
established, and a law was passed that no person who had 
not sat in parliament since the trial of the king should be 
admitted without previous inquiry by a committee and a 
satisfactory report on his fitness. From all this it is evident 
how efi'ectually Pride's purge had changed the opinions of 
the House from the time it was ready to close with the king 
on almost any terms ; and how completely this Rump 
parliament was in the hands of the men who had put down 
the royal power in the field. 

At this juncture the constitution of England involved 
only these principles : 

The people are the sovereign power ; 

The parliament is the people ; 

The House of Commons is the parliament, 

And all the authority of the House of Commons is 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 327 

vested in the forty oligarchs, termed the Council of State, 
under the Presidency of Bradshaw. 

An individual commander is the supreme executive in 
virtue of the thin theory that his acts are the will of the 

council. 

From this point all the proceedings to Cromwell's as- 
sumption of supreme power follow by inevitable sequence, 
and this he plainly saw when he told Yennor that he was 
*' pushed on to do that of which the issue made his hair 
stand on end." 

Cromwell's assumption of the Dictatorship was, in a 
party sense, a political necessity. In the time of the Com- 
monwealth, when the nation actually was a republic as to 
form, two-thirds of the people were not republicans but 
monarchists. All the cavaliers and all the presbyterians— 
over whom the independents, though a minority, had ob- 
tained the ascendancy, as it is always obtained in revolu- 
tionary contests by the combined triumphs of force and 
tact— were yet resolved and determined to do their utmost 
to secure the downfall of that triumphant minority. Con- 
sequently the majority of the people stood determined to 
take advantage in the most resolute way of the errors of the 
governing party ; and it made gross errors, was in a fair 
way to lose its victory, and the dictatorship was the desper- 
ate remedy for its desperate fortunes. It could only hold 
on by force, and it could only manage its force in that 
form. 

^Yhat were those gross errors of the republican party? 
Another parliament would have been against it as things 
were, but a new parliament was the remedy, and it could 
have secured such a parliament as was needed by simple 
adherence to the programme upon which it had gained 
power. The great point of that programme was parliamen- 



328 



MODEEN" STATES. 



taiy reform. It could have made a reconstruction, in a re- 
publican sense, with universal or widely-extended suffrage, 
that would have given it permanent vitality. It was not 
just to its principles. It juggled with its own support. 

If at the time the parliament organized the frame of 
authority, it had provided for parliamentary reform, and 
given satisfaction to the army by recognition of its claims 
and by securing its pay, the Commonwealth might have 
been placed on a secure foundation ; but the war in Ireland 
and the war in Scotland gave the dangerous opportunity for 
Cromwell, at a distance from the political centre, to mature 
relations with the army that made him the naturally superior 
authority in the only element of force then organized. He 
was a dictator by the progress of events many months 
before he put an end to the parliamentary '^ prating," and 
assumed 'authority ''to keep the peace of the nation and 
restrain men from cutting one another's throats." 

From the fact that Cromwell eventually became dictator, 
he has been credited with a purpose to seize the supreme 
power from almost the first moment of his appearance on 
the scene ; when, in fact, he not only could have had no 
such purpose, but it is not credible that he could have con- 
ceived that the quarrel would be pushed to such extremes 
as it reached. In the same train of ideas he has been 
credited, besides these acute perceptions as a politician, 
with a tact and skill as a dissembler that were, perhaps, 
never possessed by any human creature. Impulsive energy 
in battle which he undoubtedly had, sagacity that involves 
the ''large discourse of reason" in statesmanship, and 
mere secretive cunning do not dweU together. 

It seems more rational to contemplate the whole state of 
facts, down to the application of Pride's purge, as brought 
about naturally in the collisions of conflicting interests ; for 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 329 

it is not in any way necessary to conceive, as an explana- 
tion of results, the contrivances and provisions of personal 
ambition. From the time of Pride's purge, however, it 
became perceptible that the men with arms would deter- 
mine all, and that they would contemplate the state of the 
nation in the light in which it might be set before them by 
the men in whom they had confidence. From that moment 
Cromwell was in fact supreme ; yet even thenceforward he 
moved more in the career of a party leader than otherwise. 

Yet the majority of the nation, which was monarchical, 
overcame the republican minority in possession of the state, 
by driving it to the dictatorship ; for upon the death of 
Cromwell, men suddenly perceived that the monarchy had 
been restored, but with the wrong man in the royal seat. 
Only a change of persons was necessary to give efiect to 
the common will of the nation. 

YI.— Inthe struggle for equality, as it appears in suc- 
cessive ages, the landmarks at least are moved. At first 
man is satisfied with the declaration of his equality at the 
grave ; next he demands to stand on an equality with every 
other in the courts of justice ; to stand in the presence of the 
laws as formerly in the presence of God ; and presently he 
must be recognized as an equal atom in the political fabric, 
must take his part in the making of the laws, to which he 
is to be equally subject. 

Later he demands yet another equality — the one most 
obvious fact in regard to which is that it is inconsistent with 
the existence of that political and personal liberty which he 
so highly prizes ; for he demands an equality that will not 
adjust itself, but must be adjusted by authority, and for 
which adjustment he must put himself in its hands. He 
demands social or economical equality — the equality of 
possessions. 



830 MODEEaS" STATES. 

As society advances to tliat stage where tlie straggle for 
life Ibecomes a struggle for fortune, the equality that had 
been secured previously "becomes the starting point of a 
new inequality ; the freedom of each to excel if he can, and 
the fact that some can, results in a distribution of wealth 
that is in proportion to the commercial talent of individuals, 
and not in proportion to the presumed needs of the posses- 
sors. Here begins the accumulation of great fortunes, and 
these accumulated, make further differences, because in the 
state of our legislatures and courts, whoever is rich is right. 

Some of the ancients held in this country that the '' state 
that was least governed was best governed;" but in the 
state that is "least governed" the struggle for life is a free 
fight, and in a free fight the greater beasts eat up the little 
ones. This is a part of the fallacy that there is a sphere of 
life that should be free from government; for the very 
essence of government and of a controlling social will, is 
the protection of the little ones that the chance of all may 
be equal. 

As a consequence of the absolute freedom of effort and 
the inequality of talent and opportunity, the people stand 
arrayed against the rich — against "monopolies;" and the 
monopolies, put upon their defence, inspire and create a 
political machinery that shall put the people down. 

Democracy, in its extreme, always assails the principle 
of property. This is not an accident— not a demogogio 
perversion. It is the ultimate term of democratic theory. 
Democracy, in its common conditions, results from a certain 
process of ratiocination applied in politics ; and this attend- 
ant upon democracy results from the application of the 
same process to individual possessions. 

It is held, for instance, that in the state the people are 
sovereign ; that they govern themselves ; and that whatever 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 331 

they toucli in tlie discliarge of that function they control in 
their own interest ; but that the persons appointed by the 
general will to perform the various acts of government are 
often able, in the corrupt state of national life, to retain their 
positions indefinitely, and until they seem to become per- 
sonal possessions ; and that this is the origin of all kingly 
rule, and of all other rule which denies the democratic 
theory ; and that, therefore, it is only a just recurrence to 
original relations if the people seize again, when they may, 
that sovereignty of which they were wrongfully and fraudu- 
lently dispossessed. 

In the same train of ideas it is held that every individual 
possession of land has arisen precisely as the kingly rule 
arose — ^by default at some time or another of a sufficiently 
vigorous assertion of the earlier principle that the land was 
a national possession, as the sovereignty was a national 
attribute ; and through the ceaseless activity of the indi- 
vidual desire to make possession permanent — which seized 
the critical moment. Therefore appropriation was an in- 
justice, and though society, in the failure of vigilance or 
power, could not, or certainly did not, prevent the wrong, 
that it has the right to recur to original justice whenever it 
recovers its healthier condition. 

It cannot be said that there are no facts to sustain this 
view of the case. But the evil is that philosophical or 
metaphysical democrats teach this simply logical and ab- 
stract relation of justice in property to justice in sovereignty ; 
and the practical democrats who rise from the gutters when 
organized authority is overcome, proceed to use it as the 
corner-stone of a new fabric, whereas its proper position, if 
it had any, would be somewhere in the roof of the demo- 
cratic temple. Thus democracy presents itself as an assault 
upon the results of industry, as well as of every other civic 



332 MODEEIT STATES. 

and social virtue, and liberty comes to mean the riglit of the 
penniless to plunder the thrifty. 

Instead of the conception of a state where every man, 
upon whom the defence of the country depends, shall hold 
the land he needs on payment of rent by money to the tax- 
gatherer, or by his person on the field of battle, is seen one 
in which the industrious and upright strive only that scoun- 
drels may divide the result between them ; and whereas the 
inequalities of the world are due to the weaknesses, vices 
and villainies of men, it is propagated as a doctrine on 
which states may be founded that the weaknesses, vices and 
villainies are due to the inequalities. 

But while an extreme democratic theory thus assails 
property, it is certain that every people in the modern world 
will adhere to the institution of property with more tenacity 
than to any form or system or theory of government what- 
ever; for a man's property, his positive wealth, constitutes 
the fortification that he constructs about himself — the de- 
fence of his individuality — his material guarantee against 
all the evils and accidents of life. In an economic age man 
cherishes his money as in other ages he did his arms. In 
an age when protestantism in religion and republicanism in 
politics have thoroughly filled the world with the culture of 
individualism until its tendencies have become political and 
social diseases — to suppose that they will not equally in- 
crease the consequence with which each man regards what 
is personal to himself in property, as well as in other 
spheres, is to take a one-sided view of human conduct, and 
of the operations of the human intellect. It is worthy only 
the purblind demagogue to believe that by institutions, and 
theories, and all other means, each man may be filled with 
an exaggerated spirit of personality, and that yet with 
regard to property he wiU be always ready to relinquish 



MILITARY DESPOTISM. 333 

tMs conception of personal consequence, and become a mere 
atom in some monstrously-composed communal entity. 

Government is the macMnery by whicli the energies of 
society are directed to the purposes that the society deems 
of greatest consequence ; and in an age of personal projec- 
tion, and of devotion to industry and commerce, property 
fills the place in men's thoughts that was filled in the heroic 
ages by glory. It is very well for students brought up on 
ancient literature to glorify the spirit of antiquity in a kind 
of poetic fury, and to endeavor to apply the thoughts of 
Greece or Eome to a world that is neither one nor the 
other. None will suffer from that but the nations whose 
political inspiration is accepted from callow-witted school 
boys and whose governments perish in school-boys' riots. 

Government's most essential function is, therefore, in 
modem times, to guarantee men in the safe j^'UJ-'suit and 
possession of property ; and wherever democracy reaches a 
stage at which the true relation to property becomes per- 
ceptible and demonstrative, there the movement for the 
suppression of democracy will have the sympathy and sup- 
port of all the elements of the people upon which the state 
really depends for its existence ; and democracy can only 
be suppressed through the pursuit of its tendencies to 
anarchy, and the growth of a military state with a personal 
head. 

Because of these relations of democratic theory to pro- 
perty, those political metaphysicians who in France, in 
1848, agitated social theories, may justly be regarded as the 
immediate authors of the Second Empire, though that 
empire has been commonly attributed to the Napoleonic 
tradition. They flaunted the banner of pauper aspirations 
in the eyes of all who feared the loss of their little stored-up 
treasure. All who wished a guarantee for their actual pos- 



334 MODEEN STATES. 

sessions — and these constituted the most worthy and im- 
portant part of the nation — ^were driven by this course to 
support the man who pledged himself to save the country 
from the Red Republic. 

Between the prosperous classes and the many ; between 
those who hold the material guarantee of property and the 
fury of popular agitators, there must always arise the per- 
sonal ruler, not necessarily to save either, but to prevent 
the collision of the two elements from wrecking the state. 
In the discharge of this function the ruler must give play to 
the popular vitality as a balance to sustain himself against 
the classes, and must therefore concede much that the 
people demand as to changes in the law. But he must 
also, to stand well with the classes, be a defence to them 
and their interests and a surety for order and the tranquil 
existence of the state. He must, therefore, both humor and 
restrain the ascendant element. 

If, however, he guarantees order, yet concedes liberal 
laws and popular power, he gives the state the advantages 
of a democratic government, combined with a remedy 
against its evils; and the state under his hands must 
necessarily make great progress, for if aU the legitimate 
activity of the people may be indulged by them, and there 
is effective provision against the evil consequences of that 
activity, this is the condition of the highest material and 
intellectual development of a nation. He prepares his own 
downfall therefore, for an advanced political conscious- 
ness will be produced, and the state will repudiate his con- 
trol and will acquire the means to overthrow him, in exact 
proportion as it acquires a perception of its true relation to 
his authority. Usurpers perceive this dilemma, and com- 
monly provide that the advantages which their government 
secures to 'the state shall be coupled with disadvantages 



MILITAEY DESPOTISM. 335 

wMcli cripple or pervert the national vitality in its growth. 
They systematically corrupt the people. They seem to take 
that grand and simple declaration of the Hebrew Scriptures 
— " Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" — as a 
guide what to shun, and they make it their science to fill 
the growth they produce with altogether another sort of 
spiiit. All their politics is involved in panem et circenses. 
They foster all the forms of luxury. Every tendency to 
sensual indulgence is encouraged; and the nation, as it 
grows, grows with a kind of tropical luxuriance — with a 
half-rotten rapidity ; and is like those fruits which, pro- 
duced on an over-stimulated soil, have not the aromatic 
fragrance of their kind, but smell of the manure. The 
nation is led away from the simplicity of taste, and natural 
vigor of spirit, which are the conditions of the existence of 
freedom. Though, like the companions of Ulysses, it yearns 
for what its soul remembers, it is captive to the conditions 
its love of pleasure has produced. 

YII. — Many a man in a position of supreme authority 
has been instigated by motives of personal ambition to pass 
the line that divides constitutional from personal rule, but 
no man ever succeeded in such a project unless the general 
conditions of a corrupted state favored his purpose ; and 
for this reason the motives of the founders of imperial 
systems are of less moment than has been thought. There 
have been very few occasions in the history of organized 
states in which this issue turned on the will of an indi- 
vidual ; in which one man might or might not, as he should 
deteraiine, set up a personal sovereignty upon the ruined 
structure of a political system; but rather the men who 
have figured in this character are the instruments of the 
political forces brought into play by the cuxumstances ; 
and if the man hesitates at the critical hour, these forces 



336 MODEPwN STATES. 

cast Mm aside, or trample onward over him, finding new 
instruments in less feeWe natures. If ever an individual 
will affects decisively a case of this description, it is in a 
negative sense. 

AVhat reams of rhetoric have l^een Ibestowed upon the 
motives of Oliver Cromwell; jet Cromwell's motives are 
only a subject of historical curiosity. In cases of this kind 
the public welfare is always the proposed motive, and this 
allegation that one acts for the public welfare is either 
sincere or hypocritical.. If hypocritical, then the real 
motive is personal ambition ; but if sincere, the man acts 
for the public welfare as he understands it ; it is his opinion 
of the public welfare that moves him ; and between a man's 
personal opinions and his personal aspirations, history, at 
the distance of some centuries, cannot determine which was 
most potent in the government of his conduct. 

How does any man know just what his country needs? 
There are several parties, and he acts with one. He believes 
that that party is right -that the true happiness of the 
countiy is to be secured by the triumph of its principles, 
and he struggles to give those principles the dominancy of 
the supreme will. His purest patriotism can see no other 
course. And as his party fails, it seems to him that the 
true cause of his country fails ; as other parties prevail, 
principles inimical to the welfare of his country seem to be 
in the ascendant. He struggles for his party as for Ms 
country. Nay, there are differences within the party, and 
he holds that the right here also is with his coterie— with 
his few inseparable friends ; and that all steps taken to 
maintain it are taken against the enemies of the nation. 
From such a standpoint he seizes power in the interest of 
his coterie— at best as a party leader. Thus, whether a 
man has the character of one who adopts extreme measures 



MILITAET DESPOTISM. 337 

in the interest of Ms party, or of his personal ambition, 
the fact that an individnal power is set np is the same ; and 
every motive leads to the same result. 

Bonaparte is reported to have said to an intimate * in 
Italy : *' Can yon fancy that it is to make the fortune of the 
lawyers of the Directory that I conquer in Italy ? or that it 
is to found a republic ? What nonsense ! A republic of 
thirty millions ! with our manners, and our vices. It is a 
chimera ! It is an infatuation that the French people will 
get over. They must have glory — the satisfaction of vanity, 
liberty they do not want. Look at our armies. The vic- 
tories they have gained have already made the French 
soldier himself again. I am everything for him. Let the 
Directory take a fancy to displace me, and they will see 
who is master. Give the French people a rattle and they 
may be led whither one chooses if he has the tact to dis- 
simulate the end in view." 

And this has been accepted as evidence that an imperial 
system was set up in France because he, as an arch-con- 
spirator, then in command of one little army, willed it. 
But he did not possess the capacity to foresee and control 
such events. If he had possessed that cax)acity he would 
not have fallen in the middle of the great drama in which 
he figured so grandly. 

It may be held as a definite law in the life of states that 
if a political system is based on freedom, on the central 
principle of the negation of supremacy of any individual, 
and one man yet reaches a point at which he may fairly 
and justly regard himself as its supreme lord, as the uncon- 
trolled head of the state, this must be because the contriv- 
ances planned to secure the equilibrium of rights have 



* Miot de Melito. 

22 



338 MODERN STATES. 

failed to accomplisli their purpose, because its system has 
given way. And if its system has given way, if one man 
may he the nation's lord, some man will be, and what man 
it is becomes of minor consequence. It is not to be inquired 
whether one man will or will not violate the "fi^eedom" of 
his country and its constitution, but whether such violation 
is possible ; for no state can permanently stand where all 
must depend upon the generosity of one. 

In the negative aspect of this case there is, as we have 
said above, some possibility. The world has heard a great 
deal of the famous cases in which ''freedom has perished" 
by the establishment of imperial dominion ; it has attended 
very little to those records which show how nations have 
perished through the failure to save them in that way. 

Proper attention to this point might counterpoise all the 
enthusiastic praise of tyrannicide that has found vent on 
poetical pages from the time of Aristogiton and Harmodius. 
ligations that have utterly perished, been crushed under the 
heel of the foreign enemy, and language, literature, laws, 
extirpated, because of the failure to establish at the right 
moment the tyramiies that might have gathered the force 
of the people into effective resistance, should at least be 
mentioned when Bonaparte and Cromwell are put up in the 
pillories of history. 

Poland is, in later history, the most conspicuous of these 
nations. Had John Sobieski done his whole duty by his 
country he would have utterly crushed out the so-called 
republic of his time, and Russia and Prussia would have 
remained under the heels of the Polish power instead of 
changing places with it ; and two centuries would not have 
shrieked with sympathetic clamor over the fall of a state in 
which there did not exist the robust impulse to prefer 
national existence to an adherence to certain common-place 



MILITAET DESPOTISM. 339 

and wretched institutions nnder the entirely delusive notion 
that they were inseparable from freedom. 

But Sobieski, unlike Cromwell, was not a great poli- 
tician ; for a great politician is one who realizes for his 
country the utmost that is possible in his period ; perceives 
clearly the possibilities on either hand, and acts within 
them ; without wasting force in the endeavor to remove the 
barriers that are, for that age at least, immovable ; and to 
be thoroughly great in serving his country, he must be 
indifferent to the idea of fame. Fame, as the aggregate 
utterance of human ignorance and prejudice, is the lure of 
feeble spirits. 



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